REPRESENTATION OF ARABS IN VIDEO GAMES: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
May Samir El Falaky
Dr., Arab Academy for Science and Technology, College of Language and Communication, Egypt, maismf@hotmail.com
Abstract
In a region full of crackdowns, Arab countries in the Middle East have found themselves in a competitive digital atmosphere. A variety of Arab-themed video-games began circulating on the Internet reflecting a number of social and political values which are sought to be investigated in the current research. The purpose of this paper is to carry out a critical discourse analysis of video games as a means of computer mediated communication. The research concentrates its scope on the games that represent Egyptians, Libyan, Syrians, and Arabs in the Gulf region. With a variety of genres, the Arab video-gaming industry is emerging attempting to exercise any form of media power over the people who play them. It is the mental, social, and ideological values in the Arab real-life, not the quality of the games that motivate the current research. That is, this study seeks to examine world views, cultural information and identities through the thematic representations and the moral values transmitted through the selected games. The current study provides a theoretical approach to video-games emphasizing the definition of the genres available; critical discourse analysis and multimodality are chosen as theoretical frameworks for the analysis of the communicative modes utilized in the games. The study highlights how linguistic choices are reflected in the mental, social and ideological representations of game elements.
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