4/8/2023 0 Comments Ryzom lore![]() ![]() ![]() The debate about voice in SL can be seen as a rehearsal of the basic antinomies of the avatar embodiment, between cultural logics stressing "augmentation" (the view of an avatar as being in a sense a "cyborg" prosthetic extension of the actual self on one of possibly many virtual platforms) and "immersion" (stressing instead the "gap" between, and relative autonomy of, the actual and virtual worlds) (Boellstorff 115-6, 121). debate held in SL (and in the Uru community discussed by Pearce/Artemesia) about voice is not only revelatory of our own complex and fraught actual world semiotic ideologies about the category of voice, so often a proxy for notions of authentic self (Mrazek chapter 5, Taylor 2009), but is also of the risky and contingent nature of virtual embodiment, centering in the avatar. 4 This seems particularly odd given that much recent linguistic anthropological work on "language ideologies" has problematized the very naturalizing basis that would privilege "natural spoken languages" over "conlangs" like those associated with virtual communities, imaginary geographies, or Star Trek fans, in the first place (for a recent look at the history of some of these conlangs from a linguist's perspective, see Okrent 2009). While linguistics departments seem to occasionally use problem sets derived from admitted conlangs like Klingon and Elvish alongside at least partially constructed languages like Modern Hebrew, Modern Welsh or Indonesian, there has seemingly been little interest in linguistic anthropology in "technologies of the imagination" (Ito 2007) such as conlangs which form part of the media mix associated with virtual worlds as well as a constitutive aspect of fan subcultures more generally (Pearce/Artemesia 156 Nelson 2001:121-3,180-1). ![]() The practice extends to virtually every kind of imaginary world: recently I was looking through a web site of a "guild" from the game Ryzom whose members are typically members of the "Tryker" race (see Figure 1 for a typical Tryker), and discovered that someone had decided to give the Trykers their own language, replete with typical phrases used in the game! 3 Similarly, Pearce/Artemesia notes that refugees from the vanished world of Uru in part constitute their diasporic virtual ethnicity on other platforms by greetings from one of the languages of the lost Uru "homeworld" (Pearce/Artemesia 98, 121). worlds ("conworlds") seem to demand constructed languages ("conlangs"). ![]()
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