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Voice Chat + Linguistics Research: got any ideas?
ProxyMan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey, my name's Dave and I'm an undergraduate linguistics research dude at Rice University.
Basically what my research mentor and I want to do is take a look at how the anonymity of the internet affects the way people speak (i.e., voice only, not text) with other people, "sociophonetically" to use an unnecessarily long word.
Basically, this:
,
but with science.
Well, that and a bit more, too; e.g., does a person with a strong Southern American English 'accent'/dialect emphasize or downplay the accent at all, whether consciously or unconsciously, in order to identify their own culture or to try to assimilate and fit in with others, etc.
Another aspect which we are going to look into perhaps even more deeply is a change in the level of casualness. In lingustics, this is traditionally measured by marking the frequency of use of 'gonna' rather than 'going to' and many similar markers.
The big picture, however, is not that these changes occur, but the level to which they occur online compared to how they occur IRL.
Anyway, the reason for making this thread is to find out what sorts of games and environments would work best for this series of experiments. Originally, my mentor was very excited about the plausibility of Second Life as a 'virtual laboratory' of sorts, since he read that the game features voice chat. So, he had me drudge through the swampy depths for a week until I found out that voice in SL was basically old hat and was not high in use.
So now, we're looking at games, hence my posting in G&T. Obviously there are some sorts of games and online multiplayer systems that more easily lend themselves to trashtalk rather than actual conversation. There are also games that require more hardcore strategy communication than actual conversation. And then there are games with a bit of those first two but also legit conversation. WOW, from what people have told me may be good for this. We need something with a large group of people and with a relatively high amount of legit conversation.
Personally, I play mostly oldschool games (starcraft, the older FFs, galaga), so I'm not as knowledgeable about what specific games we should be using. This is where I need input, mostly.
Ventrilo, I know, basically makes it possible for any game to have voice chat. So that's convenient for our purposes, since I can pipe the audio going on into a recording of some sort.
Speaking of recording, this whole thing will eventually be taking place with people we recruit IRL (and pay them $10/hr to play and let us record); i.e., we're not going to be recording you in your next game without permission or anything (the IRB, for one, would get all sorts of pissed, and plus it's just kinda creepy).
so, tl;dr: I'm doing linguistic research on voice chat; what games are good for having a bunch of people together and having a good chance of actual conversation arising rather than just trashtalk etc.?
Thanks everybody, and if you have any other input at all, we'd be really interested to hear it. That's part of the reason I'm posting here, too, is for general feedback, so fire away.
Basically what my research mentor and I want to do is take a look at how the anonymity of the internet affects the way people speak (i.e., voice only, not text) with other people, "sociophonetically" to use an unnecessarily long word.
Basically, this:
,but with science.
Well, that and a bit more, too; e.g., does a person with a strong Southern American English 'accent'/dialect emphasize or downplay the accent at all, whether consciously or unconsciously, in order to identify their own culture or to try to assimilate and fit in with others, etc.
Another aspect which we are going to look into perhaps even more deeply is a change in the level of casualness. In lingustics, this is traditionally measured by marking the frequency of use of 'gonna' rather than 'going to' and many similar markers.
The big picture, however, is not that these changes occur, but the level to which they occur online compared to how they occur IRL.
Anyway, the reason for making this thread is to find out what sorts of games and environments would work best for this series of experiments. Originally, my mentor was very excited about the plausibility of Second Life as a 'virtual laboratory' of sorts, since he read that the game features voice chat. So, he had me drudge through the swampy depths for a week until I found out that voice in SL was basically old hat and was not high in use.
So now, we're looking at games, hence my posting in G&T. Obviously there are some sorts of games and online multiplayer systems that more easily lend themselves to trashtalk rather than actual conversation. There are also games that require more hardcore strategy communication than actual conversation. And then there are games with a bit of those first two but also legit conversation. WOW, from what people have told me may be good for this. We need something with a large group of people and with a relatively high amount of legit conversation.
Personally, I play mostly oldschool games (starcraft, the older FFs, galaga), so I'm not as knowledgeable about what specific games we should be using. This is where I need input, mostly.
Ventrilo, I know, basically makes it possible for any game to have voice chat. So that's convenient for our purposes, since I can pipe the audio going on into a recording of some sort.
Speaking of recording, this whole thing will eventually be taking place with people we recruit IRL (and pay them $10/hr to play and let us record); i.e., we're not going to be recording you in your next game without permission or anything (the IRB, for one, would get all sorts of pissed, and plus it's just kinda creepy).
so, tl;dr: I'm doing linguistic research on voice chat; what games are good for having a bunch of people together and having a good chance of actual conversation arising rather than just trashtalk etc.?
Thanks everybody, and if you have any other input at all, we'd be really interested to hear it. That's part of the reason I'm posting here, too, is for general feedback, so fire away.
i put on my robe and wizard hat
ProxyMan on
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If you're on the PA TF2 servers, you'll hear mostly teamwork-orientated talk (I think most/all(?) of them have alltalk off). MMOs will definitely give you more casual/'actual' conversations.
The whole thing sounds interesting (with science!) and I wish you the best of luck. (And I'd like to know more about your recording-recruitment
Of course, this scenario makes it more difficult to gather control data to contrast the anonymous internet voice chat data with, even though it would provide a better natural, cohesive casual chat environment.
It's a bit of a catch-22, I guess. We require a situation where we can collect IRL data from the players speaking and yet also a situation where they are sufficiently anonymous online to the point that their speech could be altered.
Hmm.
Well, really, we only need both respective data from one individual rather than several; i.e. we'd isolate the speech of one person in Vent somehow to record and also have that same one person's speech IRL recorded, even though it is of course not going to be with the same group of people. And then we'd do that several times, with several guilds, if necessary.
Anyway, PA has a WOW guild, right? I guess I could start there, post around in their thread, pop into Vent one day and ask? Also, how large are these guilds, typically, so I have an expected value?
thanks for all the feedback everyone, and let me know if you have any more thoughts on the subject.
While it may be hit or miss I have played a number of games on Halo 3 in which people were not dick weeds. Cf course, like I said its a bit hit and miss.