THE LINGUISTIC AND STYLISTIC FEATURES OF WRITTEN NARRATIVE AND INTERFACE VIDEOGAME TEXT

Abstract

This paper describes the results of linguistic and stylistic analysis of the in-game text which was selected from six video games of different game genres and narrative settings, produced in 2015–2020. It aims to highlight the stylistic, grammatical, and lexical features of written narrative and interface text, comparing them to one another as well as spoken narrative text. The results show that the style of the written narrative text can vary depending on its sub-genre (e.g. diary, newspaper article, report, abstract from a novel, etc.), while interface text generally employs a more formal style, no matter what the sub-genre is (object description, statistics, compendium etc). Formal written narrative text and interface text both use literary lexis and passive voice more often and barely make use of colloquialisms, exclamations, or filler words. Informal or colloquial written narrative text, however, often imitates spoken narrative text by using a range of devices with a similar frequency, such as contracted forms, filler words, colloquialisms, contaminated speech, and derogatory or obscene lexis. However, one must note that contracted verb forms generally dominate in even more formal videogame texts, with the only exception being interface text, where both forms are used with a similar frequency. Grammatically, all narrative texts contain significantly more past and future temporal references, while interface text mostly utilises present forms and imperative modality. Numerals are more prevalent in written types of text, compared to spoken narrative text. In narrative written texts, those are often dates, which are part of certain genre conventions, while in the interface text, it’s any numerical data that the game is conveying to the player, e.g., the game score. The results of the analysis can make a valuable contribution to the training of localisation specialists.