Magical women: Representations of female characters in the Witcher video game series. (October 2022)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- Magical women: Representations of female characters in the Witcher video game series. (October 2022)
- Main Title:
- Magical women: Representations of female characters in the Witcher video game series
- Authors:
- Heritage, Frazer
- Abstract:
- Abstract: Several videogames allow players to form their own narratives by making the player choose certain options with different dialogues and thus different representations. This can be problematic when exploring the representation of gender from the perspective of player's experiences. I argue that one way to overcome this is to use corpus linguistic methods. In this paper, the videogame series The Witcher (CD Projekt Red 2007, 2011, 2015 ) is taken as a case study for lexico-grammatical analysis of the representation of gender via corpus methods. Keyword analysis shows that male characters are more likely to occur than female characters and have a more diverse range of professions than female characters. I argue that the main female characters of the game are typically sorceresses, and so I explore how this term is used across the corpus. The analysis demonstrates that sorceresses are represented as educated and intelligent, but subject to a glass ceiling effect: they are only ever advisors and not leaders. I argue that regardless of what options players choose, they are statistically more likely to encounter these problematic representations of gender, thus raising questions about whether it is possible to escape sexist discourses in this medium.
- Is Part Of:
- Discourse, context & media. Volume 49(2022)
- Journal:
- Discourse, context & media
- Issue:
- Volume 49(2022)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 49, Issue 2022 (2022)
- Year:
- 2022
- Volume:
- 49
- Issue:
- 2022
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2022-0049-2022-0000
- Page Start:
- Page End:
- Publication Date:
- 2022-10
- Subjects:
- Gender -- Videogames -- Corpus linguistics -- Characterisation -- The Witcher -- Sorceresses
Discourse analysis -- Periodicals
Digital media -- Periodicals
Mass media and language -- Periodicals
Communication -- Periodicals
Communication
Digital media
Discourse analysis
Mass media and language
Periodicals
401.4105 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/22116958 ↗
http://www.sciencedirect.com/ ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1016/j.dcm.2022.100627 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 2211-6958
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 23392.xml