Linguistic Peculiarities of Game Manuals

Abstract

Modern computer games are gaining popularity in the cultural space. Due to them new modern types of discourse are appeared. The growing role of computer games in various aspects of modern life, the rapid process of complicating their technical parameters gives rise to a parallel process of improving and complicating the texts of game manuals that allow gamers to follow the most effective tactics of the game. The authors of the article, in a comparative manner, analyse foreign and domestic research correlated with the linguistic features of games, game slang, manuals as examples of prescriptive text and their specific features. The texts of game manuals are an important component of game discourse, their special functional specificity and the nature of the addressee predetermine a number of specific linguistic characteristics, which are still a poorly studied. The authors consider the linguistic characteristics of texts at various linguistic levels in their relationship with the informative elements of manuals that correspond to the most important elements of the game. The authors analyse the pragmalinguistic elements of the manuals. They describe stylistic and grammatical features of the developers’ appeal to the prospective players, try to trace the logic of the use of certain linguistic means in the context of the game manuals. The authors analyze game instructions in English and Spanish, which is based on fact that English has been and still remains the main language in which original game manuals are published. Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages ​​on a global scale. Some language similarities and differences of manuals in Spanish and English are analysed. Specific characteristics of manuals regarding the use of techniques that are non-standard for this type of text, ensuring the maximum approximation to the social status and age of consumers are described. In addition, the authors provide examples of English-language game discourse penetration into the Spanish-language game discourse.

Keywords

• linguistics
• computer games
• virtual world
• game discourse
• game manuals
• manuals
• text