Social identity and implicature: Exploring the pragmatics of transgender coming out narratives in videogames

Abstract

Despite being one of the most popular forms of media, videogames are an under-researched text type within linguistics. This paper examines the language used within videogames, specifically in relation to how videogame writers index the identities of transgender characters. Utilising data from the LGBTQ Video Game Archive (Shaw, 2017), which documents the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer content in games, I identify 22 videogames which contain references to transgender characters. A close qualitative reading of instances where transgender characters occur reveals two broad trends: i) there are multiple instances where such representation is unclear and ii) transgender identities are rarely overtly indexed. Within this second trend, I specifically focus on the role of implicature and inferencing in how transgender identities are constructed. That is, how these characters implicitly “come out” to the player and the shared knowledge needed to understand these implicatures. I argue that such shared knowledge is influenced by the social identities and lived experiences of the interpreter, which should be considered in the degree to which meaning_NN is considered relevant. The research presented has implications for analysing more coming-out narratives and creating more connections between pragmatics, language, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as videogame/media studies.