Shalamai A. Discourse Features of the Diegetic Text of Video Games

The research innovation lies in conducting a linguistic analysis of in-game diegetic text, enabling the classification of its communicative functions and outlining the text's stylistic, grammatical, and lexical features. The text in question had been extracted from the US localisation of six video games, chosen according to the following three criteria: 1) the type of in-game text (spoken narrative text, written narrative text, or interface text); 2) the gameplay genre (action, actionshooter, action-adventure, role-playing game, strategy-simulation); 3) the narrative genre or setting (Medieval, fantasy, Western, military, horror, science fiction). The emphasis is placed on the similarities and differences across the diegetic texts. This study is the first attempt to conduct a comprehensive linguistic analysis of in-game diegetic text as a multimodal entity, since in the current Ukrainian and foreign research videogame discourse is often considered part of electronic, computer, or internet discourse instead, due to the focus on its other manifestations, e.g., players’ communication during team play, streamers’ speech etc. The theoretical significance of this research resides in developing a classification of the communicative functions of in-game text and highlighting its stylistic, grammatical, and lexical features in the US localisation. The practical value lies in the potential benefit of using its findings in future linguistic studies,which could involve comparing the pragmatic and stylistic features of different genres of videogame text, including other gameplay and narrative genres as well as localisations. The outcomes could also be applied in teaching specialised courses in Stylistics, Textual Studies, Text Interpretation, and other emerging areas of linguistic research at higher education institutions. The results may also prove useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students writing their qualification papers in English Studies.