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Approaches
to Videogame
Discourse
Approaches
to Videogame
Discourse
Lexis, Interaction, Textuality
Edited by
Astrid Ensslin and Isabel Balteiro
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published in the United States of America 2019
Copyright © Astrid Ensslin, Isabel Balteiro and Contributors, 2019
For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. x constitute an extension of

this copyright page.
Cover design by Louise Dugdale

Cover image © iStock.com/Bigmouse108
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any
third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this
book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any
inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist,
but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-3845-8

ePDF: 978-1-5013-3847-2
eBook: 978-1-5013-3846-5
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com
and sign up for our newsletters.
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments x
Locating Videogames in Medium-specific,

Multilingual Discourse Analyses Astrid Ensslin and
Isabel Balteiro 1
Part One Lexicology, Localization, Variation 11

1 Videogames: A Lexical Approach Carola Álvarez-Bolado
and Inmaculada Álvarez de Mon 13
2 Lexical and Morphological Devices in Gamer Language in
Fora Isabel Balteiro 39
3 Phraseology and Lexico-grammatical Patterns in Two
Emergent Paragame Genres: Videogame Tutorials and
Walkthroughs Christopher Gledhill 58
4 Playing with the Language of the Future: The Localization
of Science-fiction Terms in Videogames Alice Ray 87
5 End-user Agreements in Videogames: Plain English at Work
in an Ideal Setting Miguel Ángel Campos-Pardillos 116
Part Two Player Interactions: (Un)Collaboration,

(Im)Politeness, Power 137
6 Bad Language and Bro-up Cooperation in Co-sit
Gaming Astrid Ensslin and John Finnegan 139
vi CONTENTS
7 “Shut the Fuck up Re! Plant the Bomb Fast!”:

Reconstructing Language and Identity in First-person
Shooter Games Elisavet Kiourti 157
8 “I Cut It and I … Well Now What?”: (Un)Collaborative
Language in Timed Puzzle Games Luke A. Rudge 178
9 “Watch the Potty Mouth”: Negotiating Impoliteness in
Online Gaming Sage L. Graham and Scott Dutt 201
Part Three Beyond the “Text”: Multimodality, Paratextuality,

Transmediality 225
10 On the Procedural Mode Jason Hawreliak 227
11 The Player Experience of BioShock: A Theory of

Ludonarrative Relationships Weimin Toh 247
12 Language Ideologies in Videogame Discourse: Forms
of Sociophonetic Othering in Accented Character
Speech Tejasvi Goorimoorthee, Adrianna Csipo,
Shelby Carleton, and Astrid Ensslin 269
13 Playing It By the Book: Instructing and Constructing the
Player in the Videogame Manual Paratext
Michael Hancock 288
Afterword James Paul Gee 305
Notes on Contributors 311

Index 315
ILLUSTRATIONS
Figures
1.1 Videogame frames 22
4.1 Tech purchase menu for Terran units. Screenshot by
Alice Ray, © Blizzard Entertainment 93
4.2 Ion torch. Screenshot by Alice Ray, © The Creative
Assembly Limited and Sega Corporation 99
4.3 Hellion unit. Screenshot by Alice Ray, © Blizzard
Entertainment 102
4.4 Zerg tech tree. Screenshot by Alice Ray, © Blizzard
Entertainment 102
4.5 Working Joe. Screenshot by Alice Ray, © The Creative
4.6 Vidicom. Screenshot by Alice Ray, © The Creative
6.1 Relative distribution of BLEs across corpus 145
7.1 CS:GO as a multimodal environment 165
7.2 Hookah is changing his gun to a knife. Screenshot by
Elisavet Kiourti, © Valve Corporation 173
8.1 A side view of the experimental setup 186
8.2 Mean values of clauses used per round, split for task
success 188
9.1 Twitch stream screen layout using League of Legends
as an example, © by Riot Games 206
11.1 Ludonarrative relationships and the players’
experiences in gameplay videos 249
viii ILLUSTRATIONS
11.2 The Let’s Play Onion and its different layers

(reproduced from Recktenwald 2014) 250
12.1 Race and accent distribution in Dragon Age:
Origins 275
12.2 Race ratio in Dragon Age: Origins 276
12.3 Gender and accent distribution in Dragon Age:
Origins 277
Tables
1.1 Content words in the CVC keyword list 17
1.2 Keyword list of nouns in CVC before processing 18
1.3 Videogame frames and associated specific
vocabulary 23
1.4 Semantic neologisms in the CVC corpus 24
1.5 Examples of use of arcade 29
1.6 Examples of use of combo 30
1.7 Examples of use of disco 31
1.8 Examples of use of escenario 32
1.9 Examples of use of expansión 33
1.10 Examples of use of jefe 34
1.11 Examples of use of jugabilidad 35
3.1 Key grammatical items in a sample of four technical
registers 68
3.2 Semantic zones and grammatical keywords in the
VGT and VGW corpora 70
4.1 Analysis of N + N compounds 95
4.2 Analysis of Adj + N structure 101
4.3 Analysis of derived nouns 104
4.4 Analysis of fictive meanings 107
5.1 Word, syllable, and sentence count for EULAs 122
5.2 Readability indexes for EULAs 123
ILLUSTRATIONS ix
5.3 Compound adverbs in EULAs analyzed 126

5.4 Use of archaisms in EULAs analyzed 128
6.1 Normalized frequencies of BLE categories with types
occurring in corpus 146
8.1 The organization of participants in the ten rounds
played 187
8.2 Number of clauses used (with mean values per round in
parentheses), split by task success 189
9.1 Types of rules 208
9.2 Total sanctions by rule category 214
11.1 Participants’ profiles 253
11.2 Relevant subcategories of ludonarrative dissonance
(Toh 2015, 2018) 256
11.3 Relevant subcategories of ludonarrative resonance
(Toh 2015, 2018) 256
11.4 Relevant subcategories of ludonarrative irrelevance
(Toh 2015, 2018) 257
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, we would like to thank our respective (young and
extended) families for their ongoing support and understanding, especially
during crunch-time copyediting. We hope that the insights gained from this
book will help reflect and shape the academic and playful futures of our
children, Anton, Leo, Carolina, and Guillermo. They are representatives of
a whole generation of young people growing up to be natives of diverse
videogame discourses. Giving them the tools to understand and critically
evaluate the ludic languages they speak will be key to their socialization and
their digital-born identities.
We would like to thank the Department of English Philology as well as
the Faculty of Arts of the University of Alicante for their financial support, as
well as the members of the LexESP Research Group, especially José Ramón
Calvo-Ferrer, for their support during the LexESP IV Seminar and also for
acting as one of the reviewers of this manuscript. We received a lot of in-
kind and financial support from the Departments of Modern Languages and
Cultural Studies and Humanities Computing at the University of Alberta,
for which we are immensely grateful. We would like to thank Jennie Dailey-
O’Cain in particular for her constructive comments during the redrafting
process, and Elizaveta Tarnarutckaia for her work on the index. Finally, our
thanks go to the editorial and production teams at Bloomsbury and Deanta,
who were unfailingly helpful, generous, and accommodating throughout the
reviewing and publication cycle.
Locating Videogames in
Medium-specific, Multilingual
Discourse Analyses
Astrid Ensslin and Isabel Balteiro
Videogames, gamification, game culture, and cultures of play have

become a global, ethnographically and culturally diverse paradigm of our
hypermediated everyday lives. Games—digital and analog—are played
and revered by countless player communities worldwide, whether for
leisure and entertainment or professionally, as, for example, in e-sports.
Videogames are vilified, pathologized, or even banned by politicians
and health organizations. They are critiqued, analyzed, and studied by
journalists, bloggers, and scholars alike and are utilized by marketing
campaigns and in occupational and academic education across public
and private sectors. As “affinity spaces,” or “loosely organized social and
cultural settings in which the work of teaching tends to be shared by
many people, in many locations, who are connected by a shared interest
or passion” (Gee 2018: 8; Gee 2007a, b), games and their paratextual
environments serve their players and their communities of practice (Lave
and Wenger 1991) as personalizable, experiential tools and objects of
learning, communication, and the promotion of values. Yet, as “social
semiotic spaces” (Gee 2005), they also carry enormous ideological weight
that can inform people’s views and behaviors inside and outside the
fictional gameworlds they inhabit (see Goorimoorthee et al., this volume).
In this context, it is perhaps surprising that little comprehensive work
exists to date that examines digital games as diverse, medium-specific objects
and tools of language studies and discourse analysis more specifically. With
the exception of broader educational, rhetorical, and introductory discourse-
analytical work done by James Paul Gee (2003, 2007a, b, 2013, 2018),
2 A PPROACHES TO VIDEOGAME DISCOURSE
Christopher Paul (2012), and Astrid Ensslin (2012), there has not been any
systematic, book-length attempt at bringing together specific areas within
discourse analysis that examine in detail how videogames function as means
and objects of communication; how they give rise to new vocabularies,
meanings, textual genres, and discourse practices; and how they serve as
rich vehicles of ideological signification and social engagement.
That said, recent years have seen a sharp increase in academic interest in
studying videogames as medium-specific platforms and multidimensional
communicative objects that give rise to a plethora of paratextual phenomena
across social media, fora, streaming platforms, and other contemporary
online platforms. In 2018, for example, the area of multimodal discourse
analysis saw the publication of several book-length applications to digital
ludonarrativity and procedurality (Toh 2018; Hawreliak 2018). Similarly, an
increasing number of articles in leading media and communication journals
and edited collections have emerged over the past decade that deal with
highly specialized, cutting-edge discourse-analytical research into games
and gamer language. This work includes for example an examination of
the role of pronouns in the construction of gendered players and videogame
characters (Carrillo Masso 2011); an investigation of Blizzard’s (2004)
World of Warcraft guild members’ use of online conversational turn-taking
in the performative construction of “identities of expertise” (Newon 2011);
an analysis of the multimodal persuasive design strategies in Hideo Kojima’s
(1998) Metal Gear Solid (Stamenković et al. 2017); a study into the role
of swearing in the creation of celebrity YouTube Let’s Player PewDiePie’s
online persona (Fägersten 2017); and an exploration of immersed digital
game players’ multifaceted response cries (Conway 2013).
As the above examples demonstrate, the discourse of games involves
various layers of communicative interaction and multiple types of social
actors (Ensslin 2015). These include, of course, the players themselves
and the ways in which they negotiate meanings about games and gaming,
for instance on specialized subreddits and Twitch chat logs and through
paratextual Let’s Plays and walkthroughs (see Gledhill, this volume), but
also in couch co-op and other forms of co-situated gaming (see Kiourti,
this volume; Ensslin and Finnegan, this volume) and online game chats.
A second group of actors participating in the discourse of games and
naturally overlapping with the former group are industry professionals—
people who develop, produce, publish, and disseminate games, including
those that create rules, instructions (see Hancock, this volume), restrictions,
and legislation for player interaction (see Campos-Pardillos, this volume),
as well as those that translate the language used in videogame interfaces
(such as menu items and character dialogue) for other, “localized” player
communities (see Ray, this volume). Third, there are journalists, politicians,
educators, parents, activists, and other (media) stakeholders who engage
in debates about games, gameplay, and the alleged effects of gameplay on
L OCATING VIDEOGAMES 3
people’s health and behavior. All these social actors are deeply invested and
engaged in the construction and evolution of lexical and phraseological
items that form the building blocks of videogame lexicons across languages
(see Álvarez-Bolado and Álvarez de Mon, this volume).
Viewed from a more representational angle, the discourse of games
relates to the language and multimodal designs of games themselves, as well
as to paratexts such as instruction manuals, end-user license agreements
(EULAs), fora, blurbs, and games advertising. Games as cultural artifacts
communicate meanings via user interfaces, audiovisual character design,
backstories, instructions, and scripted dialogues; and, in order to analyze
these diverse modes of representation appropriately, a wide range of
discourse-analytical methods can and need to be used in order to address
the full range of lexical and phraseological elements as well as con-, hyper-,
sub-, inter-, and paratextual elements that constitute videogame discourse.
The idea to address this need in the form of the present volume arose
in the context of the Fourth International Seminar on English and ESP
Lexicology and Lexicography (LexESP IV) on Video Games and Language,
held at the University of Alicante in May 2016. In our respective roles as
keynote speaker and conference chair, we became aware of delegates’ keen
interest in this evolving subject area, coupled with a strongly felt demand
for leadership and consolidated, collaborative scholarship to drive the field
forward. Inspired by this insight, we decided to solicit contributions to
what is the first significant collection of international, cutting-edge research
in videogame linguistics (understood as a subarea of media linguistics),
performed by linguists and media and communication scientists and
scholars from around the world, in and about multiple languages. A number
of contributors to this book presented earlier drafts of their chapters at
LexESP IV. Others followed the ensuing call for papers. The result is a
refreshing mixture of cultural, linguistic, and disciplinary backgrounds and
career stages, and it was particularly exciting for us to see the future of the
field heralded in the work of our more junior contributors. By the same
token, we are honored and pleased to have been able to bring on board
the perhaps most eminent international scholar in the field of videogame
literacy, Prof. James Paul Gee, who kindly provided a thought-provoking
afterword for the volume.
Taking advantage of the unique lexicological and LSP (Language for
specific purposes) expertise of the LexESP research group in and around
Drs Isabel Balteiro, Miguel Ángel Campos-Pardillos, and José Ramón
Calvo-Ferrer at Alicante, we have structured this book in such a way as to
highlight the importance of micro- as well as macrostructural phenomena.
Thus, we have singled out a specific focus on videogame lexicology and how
it applies to language- and industry-specific jargon, slang, and localization
processes. Lexical processes surrounding ludolectal morphology, creativity
and productivity, stylistic choices, and borrowing across languages are key
to understanding the linguistic economies and ecologies of games. Issues

relating to lexicology, localization, and variation therefore form one of
three main pillars of videogame discourse analysis reflected in the structure
of this book, and we are delighted to offer analyses of videogame lexis in
Spanish and French as well as English. The other two pillars, or parts, focus
on linguistic and pragmatic nuances of “player interactions” in various
parts of the world, from Cyprus through Wales and the United States,
on the one hand, and on discursive phenomena “beyond the text” of the
game itself, on the other. In what follows, we shall outline the individual
contributions to this volume and how they map onto these three pillars,
often in overlapping ways.
Part One,“Lexicology, Localization, Variation,” begins with a case study by
Carola Álvarez-Bolado Sánchez and Inmaculada Álvarez de Mon exploring
what a “lexical approach” to videogames—or, more precisely, to a specific
form of journalistic videogame metadiscourse—might look like. Using a
review corpus from the Spanish technology weekly CiberPaís, they offer a
corpus-driven analysis of Spanish keyword nouns relating to videogames
and their collocates for contextualization. They group their results into
four thematic areas associated with videogame production and use and
subsequently perform an analysis of neologisms in the corpus, adopting
an inclusive concept of neology that combines new formation, borrowing,
and semantic shift. Their findings suggest that semantic neologisms—that
is, shifts in the meaning of existing words in Spanish—are dominant in
the data, as opposed to a very small number of borrowings from English.
Finally, the authors are careful to remind us about the medium-specificity
of the chosen corpus material, which may yield highly idiosyncratic results
depending on genre, platform, and questions of authorship.
Chapter 2, by Isabel Balteiro, takes us into the world of videogame fora
and the lexical and morphological devices used and developed by players
inhabiting the popular NeoGaf gamer forum. More specifically, using a
corpus-driven analysis, Balteiro explores gamers’ language choices within
the NeoGaf community or group. The author suggests that the interactions
of gamers in fora through posts have their own register which presents a
balance between specialized/technical jargon and relaxed slang. Accordingly,
Balteiro’s findings include the identification of specific and highly creative
lexical units which seem exclusive to this group and, in general, to gamers’
lexical stock in fora. As expected and hypothesized in this study, among the
word-formation mechanisms employed, gamers’ lexis and terminology are
highly prolific in abbreviations (mainly acronyms and initialisms), which
the author considers as a consequence of the conditions imposed by the
online written medium where the interactions take place, and which make
the register analyzed lexically and stylistically closer to spoken discourse.
Moving from lexis to phraseology in Chapter 3, Christopher Gledhill
looks at the lexico-grammatical patterns found “in two paragame
[paratextual game] genres: videogame tutorials and walkthroughs.”

Adopting a “contextualist” (Firth 1957) approach, he posits that these
two genres are both well-defined and phraseologically distinct, and he
demonstrates this through a corpus-driven, phraseological analysis of “key”
grammatical items. His analysis allows insight into statistically more likely
occurring particles, adverbs, conjunctions, and pronouns in these genres,
as well as three main sets of patterns relating to (1) the management of the
player’s moves within the imaginary space of the game, (2) the framing of
advice, and (3) the tracing of relationships between individual discourse
referents, for example, through the use of pronouns. Adopting a systemic
functional approach to discussing his results, Gledhill concludes that it is
erroneous to assume the existence of LGP (language for general purposes)
because every language event is contextualized and codified accordingly,
and that videogame tutorials and walkthroughs are also to be seen as a
form of LSP.
In Chapter 4, “Playing with the Language of the Future: The
Localization of Science Fiction Terms in Videogames,” Alice Ray focuses
on lexico-translational complexities by looking at a particular case study
of localization from English to French. She chooses the science-fiction
videogame as an idiosyncratic vignette for how games from one and the
same genre might display very different lexical and semantic strategies
to naming fictional in-game objects. While Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty
(Blizzard 2010) tends to invent completely new expressions that only
make sense in the immediate context of the game world, Alien: Isolation
(Creative Assembly 2014) uses lexical items already familiar to players and
adapts them semantically to the game. These diverse approaches to lexical
productivity directly affect translators’ levels of creativity in localizing
science-fiction games as either more recognizable and mimetic or more
visionary and fantasy-like.
Another important area of professional videogame discourse is the
legal language surrounding the products and their users. This is tackled
by Miguel Ángel Campos-Pardillos in the final contribution to Part One,
where he looks at end-user agreements and the use of plain English “in
an ideal setting” that not only improves comprehensibility of legal jargon
but also operates as a community-building tool and promotion strategy. By
comparing Minecraft’s EULA with those of other videogames, the author
highlights a number of specific devices that successfully present the game as
an “indie” product, where developers and gamers participate in a friendly,
relaxed atmosphere. The gamers’ hearts are won by avoiding legalese but
also through colloquialisms, contractions, and side remarks that make this
EULA an interesting example, which may perhaps pave the way for the
future.
The second thematic pillar of this book is interaction between players,
which, as various contributions to Part Two demonstrate, shows some
intriguing commonalities between online and offline, physically co-located

and remote communication—such as bad language, swearing, discourses of
“cool” and fun, and the strangely paradoxical phenomenon of cooperative
impoliteness (see also Ensslin 2012). These commonalities are partly due to
players’ heightened emotional stance during gameplay, but also to the specific
social rules at play during play. In their chapter on “Bad Language and Bro-
up Cooperation in Co-sit Gaming,” Astrid Ensslin and John Finnegan offer a
corpus-driven analysis of co-situated gamers’ prolific use of “Bad-Language
Expressions” (McEnery 2006), the vast majority of which turn out to be
religious terms of abuse and actual expletives and which they observe to be
part of a general “bro-up” tendency that involves high levels of polite and
mutually supportive behavior. Interviews with players in their study suggest
that this overuse (compared to the BNC Spoken) is not primarily intended
as subversive behavior vis-à-vis perceived social norms, as McEnery (2006)
suggests, but a symptom of deep immersion that removes verbal inhibitions,
of extreme levels of affect and emotional investedness, and of a degree of
performative pressure to use bad language, imposed by the community of
practice themselves.
A specific ethnographic lens through which to view bad language in the
form of dysphemisms (swearing, expletives, and irony) in co-sit gameplay is
offered by Elizavet Kiourti in Chapter 7. Her chapter focuses on the ways in
which bad language serves as a means of linguistic identity (re-)construction.
It zooms in on a small group of young Cypriot gamers playing the multiplayer
first-person shooter Counter Strike: Global Offensive (Valve 2018) on a
regular basis. In line with Ensslin and Finnegan (this volume), Kiourti’s
analysis of participants’ turn-taking in the Greek-Cypriot dialect suggests
that the use of swearing and bad language is socially functionalized. More
specifically, dysphemisms serve as situationally codified, communicative
short-cuts to prevent team-based performative face-loss, to ease stressful
situations, and to ensure in-group bonding.
Chapter 8 by Luke A. Rudge addresses the idea of (un)collaborative
gamer language and examines it in relation to player cooperation in timed
puzzle games. Combining elements of Systemic Functional Linguistics and
Conversation Analysis, he highlights the importance of effective verbal
communication in situations where players engaged in collaborative
play are confronted with limited time, limited information, and limited
communicative capabilities. Among his findings is the observation that the
use of complete rather than elliptical clauses and mutual completions of
adjacency pairs is associated with successful task completion, thus suggesting
that it is worth players’ time to invest in effective communication despite, or
indeed because of, a race against time.
A specific take on impoliteness as a common phenomenon in online
discourse is offered by Sage L. Graham and Scott Dutt. In Chapter 9, “‘Watch
the Potty Mouth:’ Negotiating Impoliteness in Online Gaming,” the authors
examine emergent interactions in online gaming streams to illuminate the

ways that the posted rules of interaction intersect with communicative
practice. Using a corpus of video streams and online chats from Twitch.tv,
this chapter investigates how rules and guidelines for appropriate behavior
are understood by participants in synchronous online chat and then explores
how these same rules are understood and enforced by both botmods and
human moderators who are responsible for identifying and then controlling
impolite, disruptive, and/or aggressive behavior. The authors observe how
competing interests—the duty to maintain order in the chatroom and the
need to avoid ostracizing participants and viewers by overly harsh rule
enforcement—have to be balanced by streamers, particularly in cases of
spam and copypasta. They also highlight the dilemma posed by automated
regulatory behavior resulting in out-of-sync punishment.
Part Three of this book, then, tackles the complex, multilayered discoursal
ramifications of game design, from mechanics to storytelling, voice acting,
and player instructions. It moves beyond existing “textual” approaches to
game analysis by offering new perspectives on videogame multimodality,
narrativity, and paratextuality. In Chapter 10, “On the Procedural Mode,”
Jason Hawreliak examines procedurality as a medium-specific mode
of expression that has hitherto been largely neglected by frameworks of
multimodal discourse analysis. Using close-play as analytical method, he
demonstrates how the procedural mode dynamically influences the meaning
of other communicative modes often found in video games, such as moving
images, music, and haptics, and that it can either consonantly align with
or dissonantly work against the informational content produced by other
modes, thus creating powerful aesthetic effects such as ludonarrative
dissonance (Hocking 2007).
In Chapter 11, “The Player Experience of BioShock: A theory of
ludonarrative relationships,” Weimin Toh examines medium-specific
ludonarrative relationships as a key element of videogame discursivity. The
author examines how players’ interactions and gameplay performances
in gameplay videos are actualized based on players’ understandings of
the relationships between the games’ mechanics and their storytelling
elements. Furthermore, Toh analyzes how the interaction of the player in
the videogame with the player’s simultaneous gameplay performance in the
video contributes to the actualization of the player’s narration-commentary.
His findings are intended to help videogame developers and researchers
obtain a better understanding of how players make meaning and interact
with the videogame content (ludonarrative) to produce their gameplay
videos, which are, after all, a key factor of commercial and noncommercial
player engagement and thus a symptom of a game’s popularity.
Venturing a hitherto rare look into the audiodiscursive landscape of
game design, in Chapter 12, Tejasvi Goorimoorthee, Adrianna Csipo, Shelby
Carleton, and Astrid Ensslin examine the voiced-over speech accents of
nonplayer characters (NPCs) in BioWare’s blockbuster fantasy role-playing

game Dragon Age: Origins (DAO 2009) as a form of “sociophonetic othering.”
The authors present a detailed view of the speech accent distribution in
the game during a typical, full playthrough and analyze how native and
foreign accents of English are used as sites of othering and of perpetuating
standard language ideology. They identify patterns of both intentional and
unintentional othering that occurs based on specific voice-acting choices
and practices. They discuss how sociophonetic representations function
politically in DAO by examining how accents delineate class structure and
social hierarchy among races. Their findings show that DAO lacks cultural
diversity in the speech accents assigned to its characters.
The final chapter of the book offers a diachronic look at a paratextual
genre that seems key to games in general but has essentially faded as a textual
phenomenon in the videogame industry in the past decade: the instruction
manual. In “Playing it By the Book: Instructing and Constructing the Player
in the Videogame Manual Paratext,” Michael Hancock conceptualizes the
videogame instruction manual as a paratext with a view to forming an
understanding of how the manual constructs the ideal gamer, by pushing the
player toward the new cool. He takes the Donkey Kong Country manual’s
(Rare 1994) lead character Cranky as his main case study, addressing the
question of why a textual genre meant to inform players about a game
features a character who mocks the player for seeking that information,
contradicts the manual’s descriptions of the game, and opposes the very
notion that the manual should exist. As well as heralding the surmise of the
genre as a separate paratextual item in what is by now also an almost dated
form of distribution, the game box, the Donkey Kong Country manual
presents its audience with a very specific message about game culture and
where it is going.
The “Where is it going?” question is again addressed by James Paul Gee in
the Afterword to this book. He announces the discourse analysis of gaming
as a “new field of inquiry” that examines a “domain of human activity”
that is language in use and thus highly contextualized. He emphasizes how
the contributions to this book set the scene for a new area of linguistic
research and that “the deeply important study of how language helps form
and, in turn, is changed by gaming as a distinctive human activity.” He also
highlights that the research presented in this book offers methodological and
conceptual insights that may become applicable to a variety of other areas
of human life. Gee’s vision of a possible future for (videogame) discourse
analysis is a neostructuralist return to grammar as “anchor and choice
maker” in people’s ongoing endeavor to produce and process situational
meaning. The point of this “linguistic” approach to discourse would provide
a lens through which to view human nature and social interactions on a
more fundamental level. Videogames, in turn, will enrich this prospect with
a medium-specific mirror of humanity’s “shared imagination.”
Let us close with a methodological note. A book that bears within its title
one of the most diverse, multi- and interdisciplinary analytical approaches
in use across humanities and social sciences needs to map its own tools
carefully, not least because its media focus is so diverse and fast changing
that it requires constant scholarly innovation. It is thus not surprising
that the contributions to this volume showcase a broad, yet by no means
exhaustive, range of possible theoretical and methodological combinations
and triangulations. While various chapters follow a mostly corpus-driven,
quantitative approach (e.g., Álvarez-Bolado Sánchez and Álvarez de Mon;
Gledhill), enriched by descriptive analysis (e.g., Balteiro), others demonstrate
the importance of complementing quantitative with qualitative research for
their goals (e.g., Campos-Pardillos; Ensslin and Finnegan; Goorimoorthee
et al.). Some choose case studies to illustrate theoretical innovation (e.g.,
Hawreliak), professional-creative concerns (e.g., Ray), and historical
developments (e.g., Hancock), while others examine conversational and/
or grammatical patterns and cooperation in ethnographical studies (e.g.,
Graham and Dutt; Kiourti; Rudge; Toh). Together, these methodological
choices constitute the foundation of a new and expanding repository for the
medium-specific discourse analysis of videogames, which we hope will be an
inspiration as well as a critical starting point for future research.
References
2K Boston (2007), Bioshock, Quincy, MA: 2K Games.
BioWare (2009), Dragon Age: Origins, Redwood City: Electronic Arts.
Blizzard Entertainment (2004), World of Warcraft, Irvine, CA: Blizzard
Entertainment.
Blizzard Entertainment (2010), Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, Irvine, CA: Blizzard
Entertainment.
Carillo Masso, I. (2011), “The grips of fantasy: The construction of female
characters in and beyond virtual game worlds,” in A. Ensslin and E. Muse (eds.),
Creating Second Lives: Community, Identity and Spatiality as Constructions of
the Virtual, 113–42, New York, NY: Routledge.
Conway, S. (2013), “Argh! An exploration of the response cries of digital game
players,” Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds, 5 (2): 131–46.
Creative Assembly (2014), Alien: Isolation, Tokyo: Sega.
Ensslin, A. (2012), The Language of Gaming, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ensslin, A. (2015), “Discourse of games,” in C. Ilie and K. Tracy (eds.),
International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction, Hoboken, NJ:
Wiley-Blackwell, doi:10.1002/9781118611463.wbielsi154.
Fägersten, K.B. (2017), “The role of swearing in creating an online persona: The
case of YouTuber PewDiePie,” Discourse, Context & Media, 18: 1–10.
Firth, J.R. (1957), Modes of Meaning: Papers in Linguistics, 1934–1951, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Gee, J.P. (2003), What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and
Literacy, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gee, J.P. (2005), “Social semiotic spaces and affinity spaces: From The Age of
Mythology to today’s schools,” in D. Barton and K. Tusting (eds.), Beyond
Communities of Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gee, J.P. (2007a), What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and
Literacy, 2nd edn., New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gee, J.P. (2007b), Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays on
Video Games, Learning and Literacy, New York: Peter Lang.
Gee, J.P. (2013), Good Video Games and Good Learning: Collected Essays on
Video Games, Learning and Literacy, 2nd edn., New York: Peter Lang.
Gee, J.P. (2018), “Affinity spaces: How young people live and learn on line and out
of school,” Phi Delta Kappan, 99 (6): 8–13.
Hawreliak, J. (2018), Multimodal Semiotics and Rhetoric in Videogames,
New York: Routledge.
Hocking, C. (2007), “Ludonarrative dissonance in Bioshock,” Click Nothing,
October 7. Available online: http://clicknothing.typepad.com/click_nothing
/2007/10/ludonarrative-d.html.
Kojima, H. (1998), Metal Gear Solid, Japan, Tokyo: Konami Computer
Entertainment.
Lave, J. and E. Wenger (1991), Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral
Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McEnery, T. (2006), Swearing in English: Bad Language, Purity and Power from
1586 to the Present, London: Routledge.
Mojang (2011), Minecraft, Sweden: Mojang AB.
Newon, L. (2011), “Multimodal creativity and identities of expertise in the digital
ecology of a World of Warcraft guild,” in C. Thurlow and K. Mroczek (eds.),
Digital Discourse: Language in the New Media, 131–53, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Paul, C.A. (2012), Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games: Analyzing Words,
Design, and Play, New York, NY: Routledge.
Rare (1994), Donkey Kong Country Instructional Booklet, Kyoto: Nintendo.
Stamenković, D., M. Jaćević, and J. Wildfeuer (2017), “The persuasive aims
of Metal Gear Solid: A discourse theoretical approach to the study of
argumentation in video games,” Discourse, Context & Media, 15: 11–23.
Toh, W. (2018), A Multimodal Approach to Video Games and the Player
Experience, New York: Routledge.
Valve Corporation (2018), Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Bellevue, WA:
Valve Corporation.
PART ONE
Lexicology,
Localization,
Variation
12
1
Videogames
A Lexical Approach
Carola Álvarez-Bolado and

Inmaculada Álvarez de Mon
1 Introduction
When we first came across the lexis of videogames years ago, we were actually
looking for specialized texts on new technologies and the internet to be used
in the ESL (English as a second language) classroom with our engineering
students at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM). On that occasion, we
were trying to select technical texts in Spanish that could serve as a reference
of the kind of vocabulary the students would encounter in similar texts in
English. Among the different kinds of passages selected with that teaching
purpose in mind, we found videogame reviews published in CiberPaís, the
supplement on new technologies and the internet of EL PAÍS, Spain’s largest
newspaper. When trying to decide whether to include some videogame
technical vocabulary in our selection, the lexis we found in those reviews
surprised us. We had expected to find abundant computer terminology, but
our findings were rather unexpected instead: the texts did certainly include
specialized terms, but there were also characters, stories, missions, enemies,
adventures, and avatars. In addition to videogame engines, polygons, and
graphics, we could read about spells and secret codes, designers and artists.
That mixture of ludic, narrative, industrial, and technological elements
made the lexis of videogames in Spanish one that was both surprising and
attractive, and one that, to our view, deserved some academic attention.
For this reason, we decided to analyze videogame reviews with the aim of
finding out more about the lexis used in them. We tried to establish if they
were new words or already existing words in Spanish acquiring a different
meaning, and if so, how the new meanings had originated and what kind of
reality they described. In addition, the fact that CiberPaís included reports
and analyses of new technologies other than videogame reviews allowed us
to determine which words were exclusive to the videogame lexical domain
by comparing the different genres present in the supplement. Fortunately,
EL PAÍS was helpful enough to provide us with the corpus of CiberPaís and,
as will be explained later, it also gave us the possibility of using a collection
of reviews large enough to produce relevant results as well as consistent
data on the lexis of videogames as a specific domain. This chapter shows the
results of analyzing the aforementioned corpus over a period of 10 years.
When facing the analysis of the lexis of a domain from the point of view
both of its specificity and its formal as well as semantic features, as it is
the case with videogames, it seems relevant to clarify first the notion of
neologism. This can refer to a newly created word; a word coming from
another language, such as English; or one already existing in the language
under analysis but with a different meaning. Since new advances require
new denominations, the study of neologisms has been of special interest
when it comes to the terminology of science and technology. It acquired
great importance at the end of the twentieth century given the explosion
of technological advances taking place in the fields of electronics and
telecommunications (Álvarez de Mon 2006: 241–62), which made especially
relevant the analysis of the creation of terminology in Spanish, as Aguado de
Cea’s work in the field of computer science reveals (1995, 2006). Although
traditionally any new word widely used is considered a neologism, neology
is not a clear-cut concept, as evidenced by different authors (Rey 2005:
311–33; Cabré 1993: 450). In specialized terminology (Cabré 1993: 446),
neology results in a new term, neonym, which refers to new denominations
in specialized languages.
Algeo (1991: 2) refers to the question of identifying neologisms by stating
that a new word can be either a word with a form that has never been seen
or heard before or perhaps a preexisting form showing a new use:
The form of the word itself may be novel, a form that has not been seen
in English … or the newness may lie in a novel use of an existing form.
In the latter case, the novelty may be in what the word refers to … the
word’s grammar … or even its relationship to those who use it.
As will be explained here, it is precisely the “newness” in the use of an existing

form, that is, a word used with a new meaning in a different context, that
V IDEOGAMES 15
we consider relevant for clarification. According to Rey (2005: 312), those

words that are not strictly new but have acquired a new meaning are to be
considered neologisms of meaning or neosemanticisms, as new meanings
develop for already existing words in the language. This type of neologism,
which is based on the distinction between formal and semantic neology, has
also been applied to studies of neology in nonspecialized Spanish (Guerrero
Ramos 1995: 24) and is present in the CiberPaís corpus designating some
of the key concepts of the videogame domain. More recently, other concepts
such as pseudo-anglicism, hybrid anglicism, and false anglicism have been
used when studying the lexical input of English into European languages
(Görlach 2001; Onysko 2007; Furiassi 2010).
Another crucial notion of our study is context, because it has allowed us
to identify new meanings of the words under study and to determine the
characteristics of the new concepts to which they refer. From a linguistic
point of view, context has many features. In order to reach a definition and
describe its importance in the identification of new meanings in the specialized
corpus, this research has taken into account different approaches. Coseriu
(1973: 230–33) defines context as the reality surrounding a linguistic sign, an
act of speech, or a text. In British linguistics, the work of the anthropologist
Malinowski led to Halliday’s (1978: 143) description of context as a
situation and its components: field (content), tenor (relationship between
speakers), and mode (channel or medium of communication). On the other
hand, Miller (1999: 15) defines the situational context as the information
“about the purposes and goals of the communicative interaction,” the topic
context as “that depending on the domain of discourse,” and the local
context as “information provided by words in the immediate neighborhood.”
Context is also taken into account by relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson
1986: 15), which describes it as “the set of premises used in interpreting
an utterance.” More recently, Van Dijk’s (2009: 165) comments on context
have added value to the debate. His view of contexts as “mental constructs
of relevant aspects of social situations [that] influence what people say and
especially how they do so,” thus determining lexical choice and syntax, is
of special interest regarding the gaming experience and the circumstances
which surround it. Notwithstanding their role as journalists, videogame
reviewers are usually accomplished players who analyze and write about
their own practice and skill when playing, which can have an impact on
their selection of words when writing.
Finally, and still in connection with context, there is another key concept
that was particularly convenient for our study of videogame lexis, that of
collocation. Since Firth’s often-quoted statement “you shall know a word
by the company it keeps” (Firth 1957: 11), usual combinations of words
or lexical solidarities have remained a controversial idea. For the structural
approach (Sinclair 1991: 65; Hunston 2002: 142; Francis 1993: 147), a
collocation is determined by its structure and occurs in patterns, so its study
should include grammar. However, lexical combinations are also an object

of study for lexicographers (L’Homme 2009: 238; Bergenhholtz and Tarp
2010: 33), who differ on the way collocations should be grouped, codified,
and organized in dictionaries. The lexical approach, whose main advocates
are Halliday (1996) and Sinclair (1991), agrees with Firth that the words
that surround a term determine its meaning, and that part of the meaning is
consequently the result of the terms occurring next to one or several specific
words. For our study, we adopted a generic concept of collocation: a frequent
combination of words, which allowed us to analyze concordances, that is,
cooccurrences of keywords, as well as obtain data for the disambiguation
of new meanings.
2 Corpus description and analysis

Years before they were officially established as a cultural reality, the need
arose in the press for a specialized section analyzing videogames, thus adding
a new genre to the already traditional reviews of books and films.1 Published
in the CiberPaís digital edition for the first time in 1996, the singularity
of videogame reviews is the mixture of artistic and technological features
present in them in order to guide the readers. Authored by specialized
journalists who master the language of so-called electronic entertainment,
they soon became regular articles in the written press. Therefore, videogame
reviews seemed the perfect context for a study of lexis. After all, they are
written by experts whose purpose is to inform the reader about the game
being reviewed and therefore include all the information relevant for that
purpose. The reviews in the corpus include the following information: the
genre, the game developers, the type of device required, the suitable age
range of its players, and its price. From a technical and artistic perspective,
many details are added to inform the reader on how the game was developed,
its difficulty, and the degree of entertainment provided. Usually, an overall
evaluation of the videogame is included together with some information on
localization, dubbing, and release date.
For our study, the initial corpus, including every article published in
CiberPaís, was divided into two smaller corpora: one consisting of 983
videogame reviews, called the CVC (Corpus de Videojuegos CiberPaís); and
a reference corpus, CRC (Corpus de Referencia CiberPaís), made up of the
rest of articles published in the supplement between 1998, the publication
date of the first videogame review in the written edition, and 2008. Our
choice of that particular span was driven by the fact that CiberPaís ceased to
be issued as such in 2010, when information on technology and the internet
began to be part of EL PAÍS. We decided to stick to a span of 10 years and
considered it a happy coincidence that the period covered by those reviews
is one of special relevance for videogame development. As it happens, in
V IDEOGAMES 17
1998 a new generation of consoles was born with the launch of the first one
equipped with a modem for surfing the internet and online gaming. Such
advances in technology led to some of the most classic and well-known
videogames (The Legend of Zelda “Ocarina of Time,” Fallout 2, and Parasite
Eve, among others). Moreover, once the millennium virus of the year 2000
was overcome, portable consoles appeared, and three-dimensional games
revolutionized the industry, changing the concept of the videogame. These
trends later promoted the extension of videogames to an enormous global
market in terms of target age groups and technologies, proliferating new
genres and subgenres such as exergames and casual and social network
games.
From the point of view of content, both corpora can be considered
specialized, but CVC is also a genre-specific corpus as it only consists of
videogame reviews. The total number of tokens in CVC is 370,138, and
there are 235,908 tokens in CRC.
The initial analysis of the corpus was carried out using Wordsmith Tools
4.0 (Scott 2004). By means of the Wordlist tool, two lists of words were
produced: a list for the CVC corpus and another for the CRC corpus. The
comparison between these two lists made using the Keyword tool (Scott
2004) resulted in the list of CVC keywords consisting of 500 lexical units,
mostly nouns, but also verbs, adjectives, prepositions, articles, and pronouns.
From this keyword list, we discarded proper names and functional words
such as conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and quantifiers. Proper names
are highly frequent for referring to the videogame manufacturers or the
journalists authoring the reviews, but since they do not belong to the Spanish
word stock but rather to what is considered encyclopedic knowledge, they
are not the focus of our study.
The keyword list served to identify the most relevant concepts in the
thematic domain. Not surprisingly, the first word in the list is juego (game).
We decided to focus on the study on nouns, as they refer to the concepts
in the domain, and to analyze adjectives and verbs as collocates of those
nouns. The number of lexical units in CVC for each word class is shown in
Table 1.1.
After discarding both grammatical words and proper names, the list was
reduced to 150 nouns. Table 1.2 shows this preliminary list of nouns, which
TABLE 1.1 Content words

in the CVC keyword list
Nouns 319
Adjectives 25
Verbs 46
18
TABLE 1.2 Keyword list of nouns in CVC before processing

acción desarrollador hechizo ocasión secuela
(“action”) (“developer”) (“spell”) (“occasion”) (“sequel”)
ambientación dificultad historia oro seguidor

(“setting”) (“difficulty”) (“story”) (“gold”) (“follower”)
arcade dimension infiltración palanca sensación

(“arcade”) (“dimension”) (“infiltration”) (“lever”) (“sensation”)
arena dios ingredientes partida serie

(“arena”) (“god”) (“ingredients”) (“game”) (“series”)
argumento disparos inventario patada shift

(“plot”) (“shots”) (“inventory”) (“kick”)
arma diversion isla película simulador

(“gun”) (“entertainment”) (“island”) (“film”) (“simulator”)
armamento doblaje joven pelota skater

(“armament”) (“dubbing”) (“youngster”) (“ball”)
aspecto dosis juego perfección soldado

A PPROACHES TO VIDEOGAME DISCOURSE
(“look”) (“dose”) (“game”) (“perfection”) (“soldier”)
ataque edad jugador personaje sombra

(“attack”) (“age”) (“player”) (“character”) (“shadow”)
aventura editor lanzamiento piloto tablero

(“adventure”) (“editor”) (“launch”) (“driver”) (“board”)
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
corps entier, on est assuré de trouver en lui, debout et prêt au défi, le
vieil esprit de France, le vrai… Nous attendons votre bon plaisir,
monsieur Gaspard.
Gaspard fronçait le sourcil. Des Saquettes, délibérément, avait
joué gros jeu.
Tous les parlementaires avaient relevé la tête. Beaucoup, des
moins hardis, se sentaient résolus et souriaient à leur victoire
morale. Le Parlement se replaçait trop haut pour que les Gaspard
parvinssent à l’atteindre dans sa dignité comme ils s’étaient flattés
de le faire. Leur chef sentit que le beau rôle lui échappait : il sentit
que déjà sa défaite était commencée ; elle allait se consommer, à
moins qu’il sût répondre à l’héroïsme par de l’héroïsme. Dès lors, il
se décida à bien mourir, en soldat.
— Monsieur, dit-il s’adressant à M. des Saquettes, j’attends vos
troupes ; et les armes sanglantes décideront entre nous. J’aurais
préféré que ma victoire sur le Parlement eût un autre caractère, et
fût annoncée à mon peuple comme un succès de comédie. Vous
désirez qu’il en soit autrement. Je ne saurais vous refuser une grâce
plus dangereuse pour moi que pour vous.
Il fit un signe. Le mannequin qui représentait le Parlement fut
précipité dans le ravin.
Les parlementaires comprirent qu’ils auraient la vie sauve. Ils
avaient cru un moment avoir devant eux la vengeance assoiffée de
sang, la colère aveugle d’un peuple ignorant ; ils ne rencontraient
qu’un blâme intelligent et avertisseur. Gaspard inventait ce que notre
législation actuelle appelle le « sursis ». Le Parlement connut
néanmoins que, tombé sous le coup de ces puissantes galégeades
populaires, son prestige ne se relèverait pas.
CHAPITRE XXVII
Le dernier acte du bandit gentilhomme.
Des coups de feu se firent entendre, tout proches. Et aussitôt

cinq ou six bandits surgirent du bois voisin, tout essoufflés. Parmi
eux se trouvait Bernard, pâle et le front ensanglanté.
Il expliqua que, ayant appris le danger que devait courir la troupe,
il avait voulu y prendre part. Il était arrivé trop tard, — bien après
l’escarmouche.
Au bas de la colline, des dragons apostés avaient essayé de le
capturer. Il leur avait échappé, mais un coup de feu l’avait
légèrement blessé au front.
— Plusieurs de ces soldats me suivent, dit-il. Je crains que nous
soyons cernés, car j’en ai vu un grimper par notre sentier secret.
— Et nos sentinelles ?
— Prisonnières ! cria un brigadier de dragons qui parut à son tour
au bord du plateau, derrière une roche.
Alors le marquis des Saquettes, s’avançant vers Gaspard :
— Tout cela est l’effet de l’ordre que j’ai eu le temps de donner au
brigadier que voilà, au moment de notre arrestation. Et nous voici en
trop grand nombre pour que vous tentiez une résistance
quelconque.
Un bandit blessé se présenta à son tour :
— Les dragons gardent tous nos passages. Nous sommes
cernés. On n’a plus qu’à se rendre : c’est notre fin !
— Pas encore ! gronda Gaspard qui renonçait brusquement à se
montrer généreux jusqu’au suprême sacrifice.
Et montrant les bandits qui l’entouraient et qui, obéissant à un
signe de lui, braquèrent leurs mousquets sur les parlementaires :
— Je n’ai qu’un second signe à faire, et c’est la fin d’un
Parlement.
Des éclairs de colère jaillissaient de ses yeux.
— Je peux encore vous faire massacrer tous.
Marin, silencieux jusque-là, dit simplement :
— Non, monsieur : vous ne le pouvez pas.
— Qui m’en empêchera ? dit Gaspard, hautain et furieux.
— L’honneur de votre nom, monsieur. Votre honneur, qui dépend
de cette minute. Vous voudrez rester le partisan. Ne redevenez pas
le simple bandit. L’Histoire vous guette. Bandit, vous l’avez été
d’abord. J’estime que vous ne l’êtes plus. Votre cause, telle que
vous la plaidez en paroles, est trop belle pour que vous la
compromettiez par un acte indigne d’elle. Composons, monsieur…
Je sais — il n’importe comment — quelles influences vous ont porté
si haut. Pensez à elles.
Marin ne songeait qu’à M. de Mirabeau, mais Gaspard crut
entendre la voix même de Mme de Lizerolles. Il tressaillit. La flamme
de la colère s’éteignit dans ses yeux. Son cœur obéit.
— Monsieur le président, dit-il avec calme, je suis sûr de votre
bonne foi, à vous. Pouvez-vous m’assurer que, si je me livre, mes
hommes, tous, sans exception, obtiendront leur grâce complète ?
— Je m’y emploierai du moins, et je crois pouvoir l’obtenir, avec
l’aide d’un homme que vous avez rencontré par hasard, chez une
personne de ses amies, monsieur Gaspard. En tous cas, les
hommes qui vous entourent présentement vont pouvoir s’éloigner
sans être inquiétés ; je m’en porte garant.
— Bas les armes ! A vos refuges, tous ! cria Gaspard.
Ce cri était un mot d’ordre, la nécessité de licencier brusquement
la bande étant une éventualité depuis longtemps prévue. Chaque
homme devait, lorsque ce cri serait poussé par le chef, chercher
asile et travail chez les nombreux affiliés de Gaspard, en des fermes
et des régions très éloignées les unes des autres. Un important
banquier gardait le trésor de la bande, comme faisait le marquis de
Chaumont pour Mandrin ; et chaque bandit, en cas de licenciement,
devait recevoir, par les soins de Sanplan, sa part de la masse
commune.
Gaspard ajouta :
— Sanplan, Bernard, Pablo, Lecor, écoutez-moi bien : moi parti,
quand le dernier des dragons aura quitté la place où nous sommes,
vous transmettrez mes ordres à chacun de nos hommes ; ils iront
tous, et vous de même, a vos refuges ! jusque-là, restez armés. Je
ne me rends qu’en échange de la promesse qu’on obtiendra votre
grâce à tous. Si cette promesse n’était point réalisée, vous saurez
vous cacher, fût-ce en passant la frontière, par les voies et moyens
que je vous ai enseignés ; mais la promesse sera réalisée, parce
qu’il apparaîtra de bonne politique qu’elle le soit.
— Gaspard, essaya de dire Sanplan qui pleurait, il en est temps
encore. Vendons chèrement nos vies. Crois-moi, l’échafaud t’attend.
— En ce cas, de l’avoir accepté, ce sera pour moi l’honneur
reconquis, dit Gaspard. Mon sacrifice est fait, mes amis… Assez de
paroles.
Dans un morne silence, les bandits, immobiles, l’arme au pied,
attendaient la capture définitive de Gaspard, la fin suprême de leur
aventure.
— Monsieur Marin, dit encore Gaspard, je vous recommande
d’une façon toute particulière, mon fils d’adoption, Bernard, que
j’embrasse en ce moment. Vous avez d’ailleurs pu voir que ce jeune
homme n’était pas avec nous, quand nous vous avons attaqués. Il
prit part seulement à une plaisanterie que, l’autre soir, vous aviez
organisée vous-même.
— Non, non ! tout n’est pas fini ! grondait sourdement Sanplan.
— Bien fini. Obéissez.
Il tendit ses bras ouverts. Sanplan et Lecor l’embrassèrent. Pablo
attendit, pour les imiter, un signe de Gaspard. Gaspard l’appela ;
puis, se tournant vers les parlementaires, émus malgré tout :
— Je suis à vos ordres, messieurs.
Les dragons l’entourèrent. Il suivit, à pied, jusqu’à Aix, les
carrosses du Parlement.
Déjà, il ne pensait plus qu’à Mme de Lizerolles.
— Je meurs un peu pour elle, se disait-il dans son cachot.
D’ailleurs ni près d’elle, ni sans elle, je n’aurais pu vivre…
L’échafaud m’attend ; soit… J’y monterai, tête haute. Je meurs ;
mais, malgré tout, la juridiction criminelle est frappée.
Elle était frappée en effet. Une justice, un droit nouveaux étaient
promis à la France et au monde.
Cette justice, ce droit nouveaux, annoncés par Beccaria et par

Volney, ce sont ceux de la civilisation latine, ceux que la France et le
monde ont à défendre contre tous les retardataires, contre les
barbares de toute race. Il y a un progrès social ; il n’est que dans
l’équité et la bonté humaines. Tout moyen de cruauté et de violence,
sous quelque drapeau qu’il se range, ne peut s’appeler que
Réaction, puisqu’il tend à ramener l’homme aux horreurs de la
sauvagerie primitive.
Il n’y a proprement d’idées « avancées » que les idées de justice
et de mutuelle sympathie.
Certes, ce n’est pas pour ses violences qu’on aime la Révolution
française, mais parce que, à travers tout, sa pensée directrice
aboutit à la libération de la dignité individuelle.
CHAPITRE XXV
La fin de la grande galégeade et les prodromes de la Révolution française.
Les promesses de M. Marin avaient été tenues. On pensa que la

recherche des bandits serait un acte de maladroite politique ; on les
laissa se disperser. Pourtant, sur la révélation d’un bandit, qui avait à
se plaindre des deux grands associés secrets de Gaspard, les
nommés Jacques Bouilly, de Vidauban, et Joseph Augias, de la
Valette, ces deux hommes furent pris, détenus avec Gaspard dans
les prisons royaux et condamnés comme lui au supplice de la
roue [22] .
[22] Le supplice de la roue fut aboli, selon le vœu de
Gaspard, par un décret du roi Louis XVI, en date du 1er
décembre 1789. Trop tard ! Le dernier roué le fut
illégalement, son exécution ayant eu lieu sept mois après
l’abolition du supplice de la roue.
Le jour arriva où, au chagrin du peuple, la sentence devait être

exécutée.
Véritables fourmilières, les rues et les places de la bonne ville

d’Aix, apparaissaient toutes grouillantes de peuple.
Gaspard devait être exécuté ce jour-là. L’échafaud de la place
des Prêcheurs avait été transféré à la Porte de la Plate-Forme.
La foule, devant la placette sur laquelle s’ouvrait la porte des
prisons, était particulièrement houleuse, plus calme ailleurs, partout
attristée.
Depuis le procès de la Cadière, c’est-à-dire depuis un demi-
siècle, ces rues et ces places n’avaient pas revu pareille affluence
de peuple, paysans et bourgeois, bourgeoises et « répétières ».
Des marchands, qui avaient cru pouvoir ouvrir leurs boutiques,
en étaient blâmés, et les refermaient en hâte, comme aux jours de
grand deuil public.
A toutes les fenêtres se penchaient des groupes de femmes
troublées, curieuses et jacassantes. Les balcons du Cours étaient
surchargés de belles dames et de beaux seigneurs. Dans toutes les
rues, les paysans étaient nombreux, mêlés aux « messiés », tous en
quête d’un mot concernant le seul Gaspard ; chacun contant une
aventure de sa vie coupable… mais généreuse ; on se répétait
l’histoire de sa capture, chacun l’embellissant à sa manière, tous
unis seulement dans la tristesse de cette fin sur l’échafaud. « … Il
était si bon, si brave ! Il n’aimait pas les mauvais juges, voilà tout ! »
— S’il veut qu’on le fasse échapper, lorsqu’il sortira de la prison, il
n’a qu’un mot à dire. Nous l’aiderons tous !
— Croyez-vous ?
— Tout le monde est pour lui. Vous voyez bien que c’est un deuil
public.
— J’ai reconnu, sous un costume d’archer, son lieutenant
Sanplan.
— Pas possible !
— Il n’est pas là pour rien.
Les étudiants n’étaient pas les moins curieux, les moins attristés,
les moins remuants ;… les moins prêts à un coup de main.
— On ne l’a pas pris ; il s’est rendu ; mais pas sans conditions.
— Il a fait demander au roi la grâce de toute la bande.
— On le dit.
— Elle sera accordée… Gaspard n’a jamais tué personne.
Un marchand vendait une grossière image de Gaspard de

Besse, gravée sur bois, et accompagnée d’une complainte qu’il allait
chantant, de carrefour en carrefour. Il criait :
— Le portrait de Gaspard ! pour trois dardennes, bonnes gens !
Mesdemoiselles, le portrait de Gaspard, le bandit célèbre, chéri des
belles filles. Voyez : il tient d’une main l’épée comme un soldat ; il
porte au chapeau une fleur, souvenir de quelque amourette. Trois
dardennes, le portrait du beau calignaire, avec la complainte !
Et il chantait, essuyant de vraies larmes, qu’il s’efforçait de
cacher :
Pauvre Gaspard de Besse,

Nous irons sur tes pas,
En pleurant de tendresse,
Empêcher ton trépas…
Ah ! ah ! ah !
Un archer aborda le chanteur, et lui acheta une complainte. Cet

archer ressemblait singulièrement à Sanplan. Il dit au marchand :
— Tiens-toi prêt. Tout va bien.
— Je suis prêt, répondit le chansonnier.
C’était Lecor, qui se remit en marche, toujours chantant :
Le peuple ne veut pas

Perdre Gaspard de Besse !
Ah ! ah ! ah !
Un souffle de révolte passait, traversait tous les cœurs de ce

peuple : « Le peuple ne veut pas ! » Cela se chantait en plein air, à la
barbe des archers ; mais les archers n’avaient point de consigne à
ce sujet ; et, depuis longtemps, ils considéraient Gaspard de Besse
comme intangible. En réalité, personne ne croyait que la sentence
serait exécutée. Au dernier moment, le miracle aurait lieu. En
Provence, on croit difficilement à la mort, même d’un défunt !… La
vie domine tout… la vie, une joie de lumière, de bleu céleste, d’or
rayonnant… hélas !
Pauvre Gaspard de Besse ! On remarquait un nombre

extraordinaire d’enfants, endimanchés comme en un jour de Fête-
Dieu, et que leurs pères tenaient par la main.
— Quoi ! voisin ! vous menez votre enfant dans une pareille
foule ?
— Vous savez bien, c’est pour la cérémonie de la gifle sacrée,
qui doit toujours suivre une exécution.
— Plus bas ! L’enfant ne doit pas savoir ce qui l’attend.
— Quelle cérémonie ? demanda un passant.
— Êtes-vous donc étranger ? Oui ? Et vous n’avez pas
d’enfants ? Apprenez donc que, le jour où le bourreau exécute un
malheureux, chacun, père ou mère, doit gifler son petit, à seule fin
de lui faire entrer dans la tête un souvenir qui le préservera de mal
faire. Mes parents ont toujours observé ce respectable usage.
Comme nous avons trouvé les choses, il faut les transmettre.
— Ah ? bon !
— Moi, voyez-vous, je ne pense qu’à cela, depuis l’arrêt, parce
que ce petit, mon fils, c’est toute mon espérance. Il est si gentil, si
sage, et travailleur ! Et puis, j’aime les vieux usages. Celui de la gifle
est, je crois, des plus salutaires. L’éducation, tout est là. On obtient
tout par l’éducation…
Deux étudiants semblaient en grande dispute :

— Je te dis qu’on le graciera.
— Jamais de la vie ! A moins que tu appelles grâce la faveur
qu’on lui a promise de le faire étrangler par le bourreau avant de lui
rompre les bras et les jambes sur la roue. C’est le retentum du
Parlement, — une pauvre petite grâce, mais qui a son prix.
— Je trouve ces supplices bien inutiles.
— Ils sont pourtant quelquefois nécessaires.
— Et c’est justement pour avoir voulu les faire abolir qu’il les
subira ! Pauvre homme !
De tous côtés, des voix chantonnaient la complainte :
Pauvre Gaspard de Besse,

En pleurant de tendresse,
Empêcher ton trépas…
Ah ! ah ! ah !
Mais, comme il faisait beau, ces paroles, répétées cent fois déjà,
n’avaient plus de sens pour les chanteurs, qui les égayaient en
rythmant un pas de danse sur l’air de la complainte.
— As-tu remarqué que nos messieurs du Parlement se rendent

en robe, mais isolément, sur la place du Marché ?… Ah ! voici le
président…
— Eh non, c’est M. de La Trébourine suivi de M. Leteur, son
inséparable. Le fils Cocarel les rejoint.
— A bas Leteur !
— A bas la Trébourine !
— A bas les Cocarel !
— Celui-là, c’est Séraphin, l’assassin de Teisseire.
— A la lanterne, le Séraphin !
On s’attroupait à l’angle de la placette.
— Hou ! hou ! Zou ! en èou !
— Qui est celui-là qu’on hue et qu’on siffle ?
— Le fils Cocarel, parbleu ! L’assassin du paysan Teisseire, vous
savez bien ? C’est pour venger Teisseire que Gaspard mourra !
— Et ce Cocarel ose venir assister à l’exécution ?
— Il mérite la corde.
— Il l’aura !
— Oui, oui, c’est pour venger la victime de Cocarel que Gaspard
de Besse avait levé sa troupe !
— Allons donc ?
— Mais oui, c’est pour avoir pris la défense des innocents qu’il va
mourir ! Dernièrement, sa bande avait condamné à mort ce Cocarel,
cause de tant de mal !
— A bas Cocarel ! Mort à Séraphin !
Leteur et La Trébourine s’étaient esquivés ; ils se faufilaient, tête
basse, à travers la foule ; mais, quand le fils Cocarel avait voulu les
suivre, des passants s’étaient mis en travers de sa route.
— Vas-tu voir mourir ta victime ?
— Mort à Cocarel !… Il ne passera pas !
De tous côtés des groupes hostiles se formaient.
Cocarel apostropha un archer qui semblait s’amuser à ce
spectacle :
— Eh ! vous, là-bas, l’archer ! Bousculez-moi toute cette
« pétraille » ! Qu’on la disperse ! Ce sont des insurgents !
Cette injure, cet ordre, irritèrent la foule.
— A la lanterne, le Séraphin ! Hou ! Hou ! Cocarel ! Zou ! en èou !
Le « zou » terrible, répété par des milliers de voix, ronfla comme
un coup de mistral qui soulève des vagues sur la mer.
Un homme, approchant sournoisement Cocarel par derrière, lui
donna un coup de poing entre les épaules. Cocarel se retourna, prêt
à la riposte. Vingt solides mains le saisirent.
— A la lanterne !
On descendit la lanterne, à l’angle de la rue la plus proche.
En moins de temps qu’il n’en faut pour le dire, Cocarel fut
pendu…
— Vive Marin !
— Laissez-moi rentrer au logis, mes amis. J’entends ne pas
assister au spectacle que vous prépare le bourreau. Cette mort est
inutile, impolitique, barbare. Elle est impopulaire.
— Vive le président !
— Je ne le suis plus ! Le Roi me dépose. Leteur et La Trébourine
triomphent.
— A bas le Roi !
Ce cri fut sans écho. On ne sut jamais qui l’avait poussé.
— Regardez par là, Monsieur Marin !
— Tiens, tiens ! dit Marin, un Cocarel à la lanterne ?… Puisse-t-
elle éclairer les aveugles, cette lanterne-là !
Et Marin s’éloigna.
— A quelle heure l’exécution ?
— Je ne sais pas,… mais l’heure approche.
— Gaspard de Besse devrait être sorti de la prison.
Tandis qu’ainsi grouillait, bavardait, chantait, grondait et se faisait

justice à sa façon, le peuple, dans la rue, Gaspard, dans la geôle de
la caserne Sainte-Anne, souhaitait que tout, pour lui, fût terminé au
plus tôt ici-bas.
Soudain, les gens, pressés devant la porte des prisons, sur
laquelle veillaient des archers, s’écartèrent.
Vers la prison un prêtre s’avançait, qu’on reconnaissait, à la
couleur de ses bas et à la ganse de son chapeau, pour un évêque.
La porte s’ouvrit devant lui et se ferma vite, jalousement.
— Vous, Monseigneur ? s’écria Gaspard.

— Moi-même. J’avais lu dans votre cœur ; j’ai prié tous les jours
pour vous. Vous connaissez le proverbe de notre Provence :
« Crosse d’or, évêque de bois ». Et vous savez ce qu’il signifie :
« Riche évêque n’est pas évangélique ». Je viens vous dire que la
parole du bandit Gaspard a éveillé en moi de telles réflexions, le jour
de notre entrevue dans les ruines de Vaulabelle, que j’ai changé ma
crosse qui était d’or, pour la crosse de bois ; et j’espère que, de mon
cœur, trop occupé du monde, la clémence divine daignera faire un
cœur d’or. Il paraîtrait peu vraisemblable au monde qu’il en soit ainsi,
et que j’aie trouvé auprès de vous une lumière. C’est ainsi pourtant,
et je vous apporte ma reconnaissance et ma paix — le baiser de
paix, la bénédiction du Dieu de l’Évangile.
Gaspard prit la main du prélat — et baisa l’anneau ; — mais
l’évêque, ému profondément, attira vers lui le lutteur révolté, et le
serra sur sa poitrine.
Ils causèrent quelques instants ; et, quand l’apôtre se retira, il
croisa, sur le seuil du cachot, une femme voilée.
— Oh ! vous, Monseigneur !
Le prélat reconnut Mme de Lizerolles.
— C’est beau à vous, Monseigneur ! dit-elle.
Il répondit :
— J’obéis à un Christ que ce bon réprouvé sut entrevoir,
Madame, et dont il a su me faire comprendre l’infinie tendresse, à
l’heure où j’étais encore un évêque du siècle, c’est-à-dire de l’église
corporelle. Et voici que vous et moi, Madame, nous nous
rencontrons dans une même pensée charitable.
Il hésita une seconde ; et, baissant les yeux, il ajouta, avec
simplicité :
— Au seuil de la mort, tout amour qui partage l’angoisse de
l’agonisant est digne de respect et de bénédiction.
Elle s’inclina ; et il s’éloigna.
Ce que se dirent Mme de Lizerolles et Gaspard ne fut pas

proféré par leurs lèvres. Leurs regards seuls se parlèrent.
Elle écarta son voile et il baisa ses lèvres, puis ses yeux ; et ces
baisers suprêmes lui furent rendus ; enfin, elle lui tendit une rose
qu’elle portait sur son sein, cachée sous ses voiles.
— Cette fleur, Madame, dit-il, jusqu’à mon dernier instant me
parfumera l’âme.
— J’ai obtenu pour vous, ami, qu’on vous épargne l’odieux
costume des condamnés. Vous ne sortirez qu’avec un habit que
vous avez porté en des jours plus heureux. Vous l’aurez dans un
instant.
— Madame, répondit Gaspard, toutes vos pensées ont de la
grâce, et je ne vous puis céler que je meurs un peu pour devenir
digne de vous.
Elle tomba sur ses genoux, secouée de sanglots, profonds mais
silencieux.
Ce fut lui qui la consola.
— Je ne puis que regretter un bonheur pour lequel je n’étais pas
fait, Madame ; et je dois remercier le Ciel, de ce que, n’étant pas né
pour un tel bonheur, je l’aie eu, pourtant. Je me suis dit parfois que
la durée des joies mortelles n’importe guère. C’est leur qualité qui
importe. La brièveté ne les diminue pas. Quand elles sont parfaites,
l’éternité est en elles. Je vous emporte toute, après ces quelques
semaines terrestres, et ne pourrais vous emporter davantage, après
mille années de vie !
— Je ne ferai pas faiblir un si beau courage, vaillant ami. Adieu.
Ils s’enveloppèrent, se pénétrèrent, se mêlèrent par regards,
mains liées, âmes confondues, et elle sortit.
Un peu plus tard, à peine était-il dans la rue, vêtu d’un gracieux
habit de soie [23] , que Sanplan, déguisé en archer, s’approcha de lui,
avec la complicité des gardes.
[23] Une lettre, adressée par Mlle de Malherbe à Mme
d’Aubenas, sa cousine, le lendemain même de
l’exécution, donne une idée de l’impression produite sur
la meilleure société provençale, par la mort du jeune et
bel aventurier : « Quelle horrible journée, ma chère ; on a
exécuté hier, par l’affreux supplice de la roue, ce pauvre
Gaspard de Besse. On ne voulait pas croire à cette
sévérité du Parlement envers un homme si jeune et qui
n’avait jamais commis d’assassinat. J’ai vu passer ce
malheureux jeune homme de chez notre cousin Portalis,
qui nous avait offert une fenêtre près du nouvel
échafaud ; il marchait à la mort comme à une fête,
répondant par des saluts gracieux aux baisers que lui
envoyait la foule. Il avait demandé qu’on lui laissât ses
habits de ville pour ne pas revêtir la livrée de l’infamie ; je
n’ai pas voulu et pas pu en voir davantage ; mais on m’a
dit qu’il était mort avec un courage héroïque. »
— Toute ta troupe est ici, dans Aix ; écoute bien. Bernard attend,
avec des chevaux, sur la route de Marseille ; nos plus fidèles sont
avec lui. Pablo rôde par la ville, prêt à haranguer la foule du haut de
son âne, et à l’exciter contre les dragons, s’il en était besoin. Bref,
tout est prêt ; je vais te faire enlever.
— Je te le défends bien !
— Pourquoi cela ?
— Pourquoi ? d’abord cela n’irait pas sans lutte. Vois tout ce
peuple, tous ces soldats… qui, malgré eux peut-être, sabreraient
notre peuple !… On s’égorgerait en mon nom ! Et pour quel profit ?
Comment ne comprends-tu pas que tout serait remis en question,
tout : votre grâce qui m’est promise ; le bonheur de Bernard, celui de
Thérèse… Non, Sanplan… Et enfin…
— Enfin ?
— Pourquoi me faire mourir deux fois ? Mon sacrifice étant fait, je
me sens déjà dans la mort ; je suis mort à ce monde. Je ne
retrouverais pas une seconde fois les viatiques que j’emporte.
Il respira la rose qu’il avait à la main.
— Décidément, non ! dit-il avec netteté.
Sanplan comprit que la résolution du mourant était irrévocable.
— Et Thérèse ? dit Gaspard.
— En sûreté.
— Alors, tout est bien.
La rue criait :
— Vive Gaspard de Besse !
Ce cri, d’abord poussé par quelques-uns, çà et là, fut répété de
rue en rue par les foules. Les parlementaires craignirent une
émeute. On donna l’ordre à des patrouilles de parcourir la ville.
Le cortège avançait difficilement. Gaspard portait, avec son
élégance native, un délicieux habit de soie, couleur dite gorge-de-
pigeon ; et, de sa main qui tenait sa rose, il saluait le peuple, les
fenêtres, les balcons…
Dans cette foule, Gaspard remarqua surtout des visages de
femmes. Il reconnut la fille du geôlier de Draguignan et lui envoya un
baiser. Elle parvint à s’approcher de lui ; et gentiment il lui dit :
— Je te souhaite un bon mari, fillette, adieu.
Et il chantonna :
Maridatz-mi per aquest’ an !

Tout à coup, il reconnut misé Brun. Il eut peur de sa sévérité et
de sa douleur ; il voulut fuir son regard, mais il vit qu’elle lui souriait
en pleurant ; et ce lui fut une grande douceur de sentir sur lui le
pardon de cette femme simple.
De temps en temps, un cri s’élevait, jailli de mille poitrines à la

fois :
Il aperçut plusieurs femmes qui tenaient leurs enfants par la

main.
Et profitant d’une halte :
— C’est une chose singulière, dit-il à ces femmes qui se
pressèrent autour de lui, jusqu’à le toucher, — c’est une chose
singulière que ce mélange d’amour, d’indifférence et de cruauté
qu’on voit en vous, le peuple ! Vous criez : « Vive Gaspard ! » et vous
avez pour moi une véritable amitié, je le sens, je le sais ; cependant
vous êtes curieux de ma mort ; et, au lieu de rester bien tranquilles
et un peu tristes dans vos logis, vous profitez de mon exécution,
comme d’une fête, pour vous promener gaîment dans les rues. Bien
plus ! Voici de bonnes femmes qui ne me croient pas un grand
criminel, qui pensent même qu’on a bien tort de m’envoyer où je
vais ; elles reconnaissent que je ne suis pas un bandit de la
mauvaise espèce, au contraire. Et cependant il suffit que je sois le
condamné d’une justice qu’elles désapprouvent, pour qu’elles aient
amené ici leurs enfants, afin d’infliger à ces innocents un rude
soufflet, au moment précis où les cloches sonneront ma mort sur la
roue. Et quand même je serais, bonnes femmes, un de ces bandits
dont on doit parler aux enfants avec exécration, serait-ce encore une
raison pour leur faire subir un affront et une souffrance, à ces tout
petits, sous prétexte de leur apprendre à se souvenir que le crime
mène à l’échafaud ?… Voyons, les mères, je vous supplie, si
vraiment vous m’aimez un peu, de renoncer, pour cette fois, à un
usage barbare. Le promettez-vous ?
Une de ces mères s’essuya les yeux, en disant : « Hein ? comme
il aime les petits ! » Mais un chant de tendre indifférence, que tout ce
peuple à présent savait par cœur, dominait les tumultes :
Pauvre Gaspard de Besse !

En pleurant de tendresse…
Contempler ton trépas !
Ah ! ah ! ah !
A cette mère qui pleurait, il dit :

— Tes enfants sont bien gentils, femme. Apprends-leur la justice,
la vraie… De la justice, la bonté est inséparable. La violence ne doit
jamais être qu’une défense ; et, même dans la défense, elle doit
rester juste. Il faut toujours regretter d’avoir à se défendre.
Une patrouille arriva derrière lui, le sépara des groupes auxquels
il parlait. Devant ces groupes, la rue où ils allaient s’engager fut
barrée par des dragons à cheval. On maintenait l’ordre, à tous les
carrefours.
— Monte sur cet arbre, gamin. De là-haut, par dessus toutes les
têtes, tu dois apercevoir l’échafaud, hé ?
— Je le vois.
— Que fait Gaspard ?
— Il arrive sur la place… il n’est pas loin de l’échafaud… Un
moine s’approche de lui, le crucifix à la main.
Ce moine, c’était Pablo, Pablo tout en larmes.

— Eh bien, notre aumônier ? lui disait Gaspard souriant, un peu
plus de courage, que diable !
A ce moment, on remarqua que, pour franchir un ruisseau qui
traversait la place, le jeune aventurier fit un léger bond plein de
grâce, comme pour un pas de danse, en agitant sa rose au-dessus
de sa tête.
A un balcon, il reconnut Mlle de Malherbe et la marquise de la
Gaillarde. La rose les salua. Mlle de Malherbe s’évanouit. La
marquise lui fit respirer des sels.
— Tu n’as pas dû pleurer souvent dans ta vie, mon pauvre
Pablo ! disait Gaspard ; en sorte qu’en une première fois, tu verses
plus de larmes que n’en pourrait contenir un muid de ta taille !
— Maître Gaspard, dit Pablo désespéré, ce n’est plus l’heure de
rire ; et je crois bien que jamais plus je ne rirai ; je vous aimais.
— Bah ! dit Gaspard, si la première mère était morte de la mort
du premier enfant, il n’y aurait pas eu de monde. Il faut accepter les
lois de Dieu, et se consoler de tout, sur terre ;… mais, où prendras-
tu ton refuge ?
— Ma foi, dit dom Pablo avec un triste sourire, je me ferai moine
pour tout de bon, et je choisirai pour refuge le couvent de la Sainte-
Baume, où nous serons reçus par les pères, mon âne et moi, avec
grande faveur…
— Et ce sera, dit Gaspard, en souvenir de Mademoiselle Clairon,
de la Comédie-Française !… La vie, mon pauvre Pablo, est une
drôle de comédie. Il faut chercher à voir plus haut.
— Eh ! toi, sur ton arbre, qu’aperçois-tu maintenant, petit

mousse ?
— Gaspard monte sur l’échafaud !
— Et puis ?
— Le moine l’a suivi. Ils s’embrassent.
— Et puis ?
— Gaspard baise le crucifix que lui tend le moine.
— Et puis ?
— Je ne veux plus voir ! Je ne veux plus voir ! cria l’enfant, qui
précipitamment abandonna son observatoire.
Un silence formidable, étendu, planait sur toute la ville.

Dans ce silence, tout à coup, un lointain clapotement ou
crépitement se fit entendre, léger d’abord, et qui se rapprochait en
grossissant. Ce bruit singulier était parti du pied de l’échafaud, pour
se propager dans toute la ville. Il entrait dans toutes les rues et
ruelles qui rayonnaient de la place, et les suivait, jusqu’à leur
extrémité ; et ce n’était que l’innombrable claquement des gifles
rituelles tombant et crépitant comme grêle, et circulant de visage en
visage enfantin. Toutes les mères et tous les pères de famille, dans
la bonne ville d’Aix, accomplissaient consciencieusement un rite
ancestral.
Et dans toutes les villes et bourgades de Provence, il pleuvait et
grêlait, à la même heure, des gifles de même qualité.
En cet instant les cloches sonnèrent le glas. Le moine qui avait
accompagné Gaspard sur l’échafaud en descendit précipitamment,
pour reprendre son âne, attaché à l’anneau d’une maison voisine.
Les bourreaux se partageaient les vêtements du supplicié.
La foule était encore immobile, partout, et silencieuse.

Devant le moine juché sur son âne, elle s’écartait. Dom Pablo
élevait son crucifix ; et tous, jeunes et vieux, enfants et femmes, tous
tombaient dévotement à genoux, au son des cloches ; et lui, il s’en
allait, le moine désespéré, au pas tranquille de son âne, le crucifix
haut, et répétant sans se lasser :
— Priez pour lui, mes frères… Ce criminel était le meilleur d’entre
vous.
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The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse

The Construction of Discourse as Verbal Interaction María

Manuel Cardona: Memories and Reminiscences 1st Edition

The Anatomy of Dance Discourse: Literary and Philosophical

Illiberal Trends and Anti-EU Politics in East Central

The Wealth of Virtual Nations: Videogame Currencies 1st

Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and

Human Computer Interaction Interaction in Context Masaaki

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of

First published in the United States of America 2019

Copyright © Astrid Ensslin, Isabel Balteiro and Contributors, 2019

For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. x constitute an extension of

Cover design by Louise Dugdale

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-3845-8

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

List of Illustrations vii

Locating Videogames in Medium-specific,

Part One Lexicology, Localization, Variation 11

Part Two Player Interactions: (Un)Collaboration,

7 “Shut the Fuck up Re! Plant the Bomb Fast!”:

Part Three Beyond the “Text”: Multimodality, Paratextuality,

11 The Player Experience of BioShock: A Theory of

Afterword James Paul Gee 305

Notes on Contributors 311

11.2 The Let’s Play Onion and its different layers

5.3 Compound adverbs in EULAs analyzed 126

Astrid Ensslin and Isabel Balteiro

Videogames, gamification, game culture, and cultures of play have

to understanding the linguistic economies and ecologies of games. Issues

[paratextual game] genres: videogame tutorials and walkthroughs.”

intriguing commonalities between online and offline, physically co-located

examine emergent interactions in online gaming streams to illuminate the

nonplayer characters (NPCs) in BioWare’s blockbuster fantasy role-playing

Carola Álvarez-Bolado and

As will be explained here, it is precisely the “newness” in the use of an existing

we consider relevant for clarification. According to Rey (2005: 312), those

should include grammar. However, lexical combinations are also an object

2 Corpus description and analysis

TABLE 1.1 Content words

TABLE 1.2 Keyword list of nouns in CVC before processing

ambientación dificultad historia oro seguidor

arcade dimension infiltración palanca sensación

arena dios ingredientes partida serie

argumento disparos inventario patada shift

arma diversion isla película simulador

armamento doblaje joven pelota skater

aspecto dosis juego perfección soldado

(“look”) (“dose”) (“game”) (“perfection”) (“soldier”)

ataque edad jugador personaje sombra

aventura editor lanzamiento piloto tablero

Le dernier acte du bandit gentilhomme.

Des coups de feu se firent entendre, tout proches. Et aussitôt

Cette justice, ce droit nouveaux, annoncés par Beccaria et par

La fin de la grande galégeade et les prodromes de la Révolution française.

Les promesses de M. Marin avaient été tenues. On pensa que la

Le jour arriva où, au chagrin du peuple, la sentence devait être

Part Two Player Interactions: (Un)Collaboration,

Part Three Beyond the “Text”: Multimodality, Paratextuality,