{"title":"Magical women: Representations of female characters in the Witcher video game series","authors":"Frazer Heritage","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2022.100627","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Several videogames allow players to form their own narratives by making the player choose certain options with different dialogues and thus different representations. This can be problematic when exploring the representation of gender from the perspective of player’s experiences. I argue that one way to overcome this is to use corpus linguistic methods. In this paper, the videogame series <em>The Witcher</em> (<span>CD Projekt Red, 2007</span>, <span>CD Projekt Red, 2011</span>, <span>CD Projekt Red, 2015</span>) is taken as a case study for lexico-grammatical analysis of the representation of gender via corpus methods. Keyword analysis shows that male characters are more likely to occur than female characters and have a more diverse range of professions than female characters. I argue that the main female characters of the game are typically sorceresses, and so I explore how this term is used across the corpus. The analysis demonstrates that sorceresses are represented as educated and intelligent, but subject to a glass ceiling effect: they are only ever advisors and not leaders. I argue that regardless of what options players choose, they are statistically more likely to encounter these problematic representations of gender, thus raising questions about whether it is possible to escape sexist discourses in this medium.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":"49 ","pages":"Article 100627"},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211695822000502/pdfft?md5=78bdfc1fb186bd6ee8503e22c37fa085&pid=1-s2.0-S2211695822000502-main.pdf","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Discourse Context & Media","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211695822000502","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Several videogames allow players to form their own narratives by making the player choose certain options with different dialogues and thus different representations. This can be problematic when exploring the representation of gender from the perspective of player’s experiences. I argue that one way to overcome this is to use corpus linguistic methods. In this paper, the videogame series The Witcher (CD Projekt Red, 2007, CD Projekt Red, 2011, CD Projekt Red, 2015) is taken as a case study for lexico-grammatical analysis of the representation of gender via corpus methods. Keyword analysis shows that male characters are more likely to occur than female characters and have a more diverse range of professions than female characters. I argue that the main female characters of the game are typically sorceresses, and so I explore how this term is used across the corpus. The analysis demonstrates that sorceresses are represented as educated and intelligent, but subject to a glass ceiling effect: they are only ever advisors and not leaders. I argue that regardless of what options players choose, they are statistically more likely to encounter these problematic representations of gender, thus raising questions about whether it is possible to escape sexist discourses in this medium.
有些电子游戏允许玩家通过不同的对话和不同的表现方式选择特定的选项,从而形成自己的故事。当从玩家体验的角度探索性别表现时,这可能会产生问题。我认为克服这个问题的一个方法是使用语料库语言学方法。本文以电子游戏系列《巫师》(CD Projekt Red, 2007, CD Projekt Red, 2011, CD Projekt Red, 2015)为例,通过语料库方法对性别表征进行词汇语法分析。关键词分析表明,男性角色比女性角色更容易出现,职业范围比女性角色更多样化。我认为游戏中的主要女性角色是典型的女巫,所以我探索了这个术语在语料库中的使用方式。分析表明,女巫被描述为受过教育和聪明,但受制于玻璃天花板效应:她们永远只是顾问,而不是领导者。我认为,无论玩家选择什么选项,他们都更有可能遇到这些有问题的性别表现,从而提出是否有可能在这种媒体中逃脱性别歧视话语的问题。