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Paper short abstract

This presentation investigates language ideologies in Japanese video game dialogue, using a triangulated approach (developers, texts, and players) to analyse non-human characters’ linguistic representation and user perceptions, offering a new perspective on fictional identity construction.

Paper long abstract

This presentation addresses an underexplored area within pop cultural linguistics, by investigating how language ideologies are reproduced and circulated through the linguistic stylisation of non-human characters in contemporary Japanese video game dialogues. Despite being one the world’s largest video game market, with a distinct media ecosystem shaped by media-mix strategies, the role of Japanese video games in shaping language ideologies remains significantly under-researched. This study aims to fill this gap by examining how specific linguistic varieties contribute to the construction of identity and narrative roles, and how stereotyped registers activate linguistic and metapragmatic stereotypes that influence audience’s perceptions due to the intertextuality of the media mix.

The research engages with the phenomenon of yakuwarigo ‘role language’ (Kinsui, 2000), while integrating Anglo-American sociolinguistic and linguistic anthropological perspectives. Through a triangulated approach (author-oriented, text-oriented, and player-oriented), the study investigates both the implicit and explicit processes through which virtual identities are shaped in the videogame medium by language.

The theoretical section provides an overview of existing research on the relationship between language, ideology, and representation in popular culture, with particular attention to indexicality (Eckert, 2008), iconization (Irvine & Gal, 2000), and enregisterment (Agha, 2007), the ideological mechanisms through which specific linguistic forms become recognizable registers associated with fictional speaker categories.

As for the analytical part, the author-oriented analysis draws on interviews with Japanese game developers, offering insights into how creative practices, linguistic attitudes, and genre conventions shape the scriptwriting process and the representation of non-human characters. The text-oriented analysis examines a corpus of Japanese-language video games, analysing stylistic features to understand how fictional registers construct identities and reproduce ideologies. The player-oriented analysis consists of a metapragmatic survey of native Japanese speakers, exploring linguistic attitudes toward fictional registers and the stereotypes that inform their interpretation.

This presentation proposes a more robust and methodologically sophisticated framework for analysing fictionalised orality in Japanese. The findings illuminate the complex intertextual and ideological dynamics that structure mediated communication, contributing to a deeper understanding of how linguistic ideologies and fictional identities are constructed, circulated, and recognised within the videogame context.