Words and Meaning in Gaming : 'World of Warcraft' and 'Counterstrike Global Offensive'

Sammanfattning: Online gaming is a relatively modern phenomenon that is not older than 20 years. Most online players speak English in some form, either by talking or writing. The two games, 'World of Warcraft' and 'Counterstrike' have taken over the gaming-world and the gamers' language has found its way right into the dictionary. The aim of the study was to examine how meanings of language change or evolve in the context of online video game playing. In this study, two gameplay videos were transcribed and analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Gaming words were identified through calculating word frequency in terms of types and tokens, and these identified words were then analysed qualitatively. The result contains three categories: Contextual Meaning, New Meaning, and New Words. The concepts of Contextual, New meaning and New Words were compared to dictionary meanings to see whether new meanings were created in the context of the gaming world. Based on the result, the study suggests that game language can influence the overall usage of language in the future.