دانلود رایگان مقاله زبان بازی: فضاهایی از امکان جدید رسانه ها

Abstract

This article sketches a theory to describe how play—like words and images—is a resource used by people to express attitudes, to share ideas, and to persuade others. This language of play is at stake at all levels of composing, including invention, production, consumption, distribution, and access. To make this case, this essay makes two large, over-arching claims in its description of play. First, play is symbolized non-discursively within magic circles, or rule-bound cultural sites where composers act strategically. Second, play is emphasized and enabled by specific characteristics of computable media that allow it to be symbolized through rhetorical forms such as memes, feedback systems, and avatars. In particular, the essay describes four possibility spaces for play that are opened by computable media. Play is endlessly repeatable, customizable, interactive, and radically variable. The essay concludes by offering a rhetorical definition of play specific to computers and writing and suggests possible pedagogical moves instructors might make to highlight the rhetoricity of play for students.

4. Conclusion

Aptness and making play visible In this essay, I have made two large, over-arching claims to describe a language of play. First, I have claimed that play issymbolized non-discursively within magic circles, rule-bound culturalsites where a players can actstrategically and unleash their creativity. Second, I have claimed that play, though not a specific property of computerization, is emphasized and enabled by specific characteristics of new media that allow for play to be symbolized in the form of new media objects such as digitally edited images, memes, feedback systems, and avatars. This is largely because computable media, by storing all kinds of media in a specific device, allows for the information from one media object to move through another media object. Whether that is through the digital code of one image entering the code of another, a gamer’s modification that brings new music into the game space, or the sketching of a doodle on a printed book’s page, all these examples mean that the general shape and structure of one media object—its magic circle—is invaded by another’s play. Langer (1942) once wrote, “Magic, then, is not a method, but a language” (p. 49). I contend that play is an appropriate term for Langer’s magic.