Louis Chase on Language Embodiment in Gaming

What is your thesis about, generally?

Linguistics major Louis Chase described their thesis as an investigation into language embodiment in “hardcore” vs. “cozy” gamers. A matched guise study procedure would be applied in order to understand how gamers’ language is a product of the environments they inhabit. Chase asks questions like, ‘Is the fact that gamers frequently communicate without video (that is, visual embodiment) changing the way that they speak?’ or ‘What social meaning are gamers trying to transmit when they change their language?’ 

You might have seen the posters around campus to participate in a survey about gamer language, and if you were one of the brave and honorable souls who filled it out, this is the result. Chase’s main findings were that hardcore gamers shifted to speaking faster when they were gaming, while cozy gamers shifted to speaking slower, relative to their baseline. Interestingly, both groups shifted to a higher pitch when using their gaming voice.

The goal of the study was to interpret these findings in the context of prior literature, trying to make a connection between the data and how body energy and linguistics are used to index social meaning. Unfortunately, the results were a little bit hard to interpret and theories were difficult to falsify (and thus, be found valid) given the production data (the raw audio data and acoustic analysis). For example, the fact that they both shifted to a higher pitch threw Chase off. 

Chase took some time to explain the concept of a ‘matched guise study,’ and so this fascinating nugget of theory from sociolinguistics will be explored here. The main idea is to have participants listen to recordings of people speaking, read meta-data associated with their voices, and study how the participants react. 

In the case of this study, participants were given an audio clip and then a video and audio clip. Participants were then asked to provide answers on a scale of 1-7 in terms of “perceived energy, physical activity, emotional investment” and whether or not the person in the recording was a “hardcore” vs. “cozy” gamer. These results would then be interpreted to understand how language manifests in the body, and how gamers orient themselves towards ideologies of the body. Chase noted that in a typical gaming setup (voice call) you can only convey the body through language, so it’s a prime spot to investigate how humans use language to present their bodies. 

What got you inspired in this? Was it a hobby / interest, what’s a little bit about you? 

The study is a perceptual follow up to a paper they had the opportunity to work on with fellow students Grace Anderson ’25 and Tommy Schacht ’25 under the wise guidance of Professor Kara Becker. Chase also cited a similar study on language embodiment in yoga vs. bodybuilding YouTube videos. Interestingly, yoga instructors were found to have a much lower pitch and rate of articulation compared to the bodybuilders, even when they weren’t exercising. This countered Chase’s initial expectations, and so they became interested in learning more.

What has the process been like for you, logistically and on a large scale?

Thesis advisor Allison Casar was very helpful in keeping the project going and preventing Chase from overthinking. They lamented that they made methodology a lot more complicated for themselves than it really needed to be early on in the process, which required laborious compensation later down the line. 

What do you hope this accomplishes? 

“I hope this is able to tell us more about the relationship between language and the body, potentially denaturalizing ideological associations with gaming” Here, ‘ideological’ is used in the Michael Silverstein sense. Language ideology is very broadly any notion language users have (that may or may not be truthful) about language use. For example, that certain uses of language are objectively ‘wrong,’ or other linguistic stereotypes.  

The way people use linguistics as a social means of relating to the body has been extensively studied, but largely in the context of gender. Chase hopes to expand on this promising area of research. 

Any advice for thesising, or soon to be thesising students?

Chase’s main suggestions were to keep scope under control and plan from the onset how you’re going to do your analysis while you’re designing your experiment. “Don’t make commitments to doing specific things without knowing what they may or may not tell you,” they said, focusing on experimental design. “With quantitative study [you should] be sure you know how you’re going to be analyzing your results and know what to do if you don’t find exactly what you expect.” 

Anything else you’d like to share with the Reed student body?

Chase said, “I’m doing a theoretically complex social science thesis at a time when the social sciences are doing really horribly” (politically speaking). That is to say, even people who would normally approve of the social sciences see them as less valuable, and hence can be put on the back burner. But Chase believes it’s “worthwhile to study all aspects of the human experience” before we head fully into a tech dystopia.