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Negotiation for Action: English Language Learning in Game‐Based Virtual Worlds
Author(s) -
ZHENG DONGPING,
YOUNG MICHAEL F.,
WAGNER MANUELA MARIA,
BREWER ROBERT A.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the modern language journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.486
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1540-4781
pISSN - 0026-7902
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00927.x
Subject(s) - affordance , pragmatics , linguistics , meaning (existential) , utterance , avatar , language acquisition , second language acquisition , embodied cognition , negotiation , computer science , action (physics) , psychology , sociology , human–computer interaction , artificial intelligence , social science , philosophy , physics , quantum mechanics , psychotherapist
This study analyzes the user chat logs and other artifacts of a virtual world, Quest Atlantis (QA), and proposes the concept of Negotiation for Action (NfA) to explain how interaction, specifically, avatar‐embodied collaboration between native English speakers and nonnative English speakers, provided resources for English language acquisition. Iterative multilayered analyses revealed several affordances of QA for language acquisition at both utterance and discourse levels. Through intercultural collaboration on solving content‐based problems, participants successfully reached quest goals during which emergent identity formation and meaning making take place. The study also demonstrates that it is in this intercultural interaction that pragmatics, syntax, semantics, and discourse practices arose and were enacted. The findings are consistent with our ecological psychology framework, in that meaning emerges when language is used to coordinate in‐the‐moment actions.