LANGUAGE VARIANTS USED BY GAMERS IN RAGNAROK ONLINE II: LEGEND OF THE SECOND SOUTH EAST ASIA
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LANGUAGE VARIANTS USED BY GAMERS
IN RAGNAROK ONLINE II: LEGEND OF THE SECOND
SOUTH EAST ASIA
By
I PUTU ADI JAYA WINDU
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT
FACULTY OF LETTERS AND CULTURE
UDAYANA UNIVERSITY
Abstrak
Membahas mengenai perubahan bahasa, seperti diskusi antara orang-orang muda yang sering memperlakukan bahasa sebagai entitas independen dari pembicara dan penulis. Pada kenyataannya, tidak begitu banyak bahwa bahasa itu sendiri berubah, karena pembicara dan penulis lah mengubah cara mereka menggunakan bahasa. Sebagaimana remaja bermain game online berkomunikasi menggunakan bahasa Inggris sebagai bahasa tertulis dan menciptakan kata-kata baru yang mempengaruhi fenomena perubahan bahasa. Dalam komunitas seperti komunitas online gamer, mereka telah mengubah makna dan gaya bahasa Inggris dengan cara mereka sendiri untuk berkomunikasi. Fenomena linguistik menjadi tujuan dari tulisan ini. Makalah ini terutama difokuskan pada adanya perubahan bahasa dalam bahasa Inggris. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengidentifikasi dan menggambarkan jenis fenomena bahasa Inggris yang digunakan oleh para gamers dan menganalisa mengapa gamers menggunakan jenis bahasa Inggris tersebut di antara mereka. Setelah menganalisis data, ada empat fenomena Perubahan Bahasa yang digunakan oleh para gamers yang terjadi pada data; Bahasa Gamer, kata-kata Slang, Pidgin English dan Kode-Switching.
Kata kunci: Perubahan Bahasa, fenomena bahasa, Game Online
Globalization era is the era of the internet. There are many things that people could do by using internet. By using this modern technology, it is possible for us to learn and play. Game online is known as the popular game played by teenagers around the world. This kind of game could only be played if we are online. Teenagers are addicted with this kind of game. The teenagers who play the online games are
called online gamers. Language as the media of communication, especially English, is known as the world’s language. The gamers use their English as written language in online chatting with their friends in game online world. The wide uses of English in many aspects of life cause some variations. The variations depend on their function. In a community like online gamer’s community, English has changes its meaning and style in their way of communicating with it. They make a new meaning and innovation of English words. According to Holmes (1992:194-216), “Talk of Language change, like the discussion between young people that often treat language as an entity independent of its speakers and writers.” In reality, it is not so much that language itself changes, as that speakers and writers change the way they use the language. Speaker’s innovation is a more accurate description than language change. According to that statement, it is important to know why the language change is created and how the language change is written by the gamers and become exist in our society especially in online communication.
Based on the background mentioned above, the problem of the study is formulated, as follows: What phenomenon of language changes used by the gamers, what is the meaning and why do the gamers use the phenomenon of language change in online game?
In according to problem of study, the aims of this study are finding out the phenomenon of language change used by the gamers in online game and knowing the meaning also analyze why the gamers use the phenomenon of language change among them.
This part of study consists of three elements. They are data source, method and techniques of collecting data, and method and techniques of analyzing data.
The data were taken from online game; Ragnarok Online II: Legend of the second South-East Asia which was directly collected from the gamer’s online chat conversation in dungeon party of the game. The process of collecting the data was determined by terms and variation of language uses by the gamers. This study was needed to analyze the phenomenon of language change in Ragnarok Online II: Legend of the Second South-East Asia.
As online game was used as the data source, observation method was applied. The observation method in this study was done by log in into the game as player, searching for dungeon party which consists of 10 gamers, the dungeon party will spend 30 minutes or more time, depending on how fast the players kill all the monsters in dungeon, the observation focused on collecting the language terms and style used by the gamers when they were having online chat conversation in dungeon party.
The collected data were analyzed qualitatively based on the phenomenon of language change uses theory of Gamer’s Language, Slang, Pidgin, and CodeSwitching. The language change theory used is the theory proposed by Holmes (1992); it is about the speaker’s innovation.
There were found 125 data taken from the gamer’s onlince chat conversation, then they were selected based on four theories of language change phenomenon, that are; Gamer’s Language, Slang word, Pidgin English, and Code-Switching. Then the selected data were analyzed into 55 categorized into Gamer’s Language, 35 data
categorized into Slang language, 15 data categorized into Pidgin English, and 20 data categorized into Code-Switching which presented as follows:
Gamer’s language is the terms that gamer used in their daily conversation in the game according to what game they are playing. For this study Ragnarok Online 2 as the game research so the term is following to the Ragnarok Online’s gaming terms. These terms usually can be found in every Online Game interaction as a player. Gamer’s Language combines with online chat slang, and code-switching, and Pidgin English can be called as Gamer’s Language too as that is the way of the gamers to communicates . As the gamers communicate with these kinds of language using many variations. From the online chat conversation of the gamer in the dungeon party of Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second (SEA), found that there are fifty five sentences that can be identified into Gamer’s Language. The analysis of this section was focused on the meaning of Gamer’s language. The definition of word of this analysis section was based on The Online Chat Slang Dictionary.
Slang is very informal words or expressions that are more common in spoken language, especially used by a particular group or people and are not thought suitable for formal situation (The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang (1992). Slang words used by the gamers to make the conversation are more fun and quicker to type the words in the game. These several examples of Slang words were found in Ragnarok Online 2 from gamer’s conversation in the game. This analysis section was focused on the meaning of Slang words found in the gamer’s conversation. The analysis of this section was based on The Online Chat Slang Dictionary.
Pidgin is known as language that doesn’t have a native speaker of language (Holmes, 1992). This kind of language also occurs among the gamers in trading using
English as some of them are not the native speaker of the language. From the conversation of the gamer in the dungeon party of Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second (SEA), in relation to Pidgin English found that there are fifteen sentences chosen that can be identified into Pidgin Language. This analysis section was focused on the meaning of the gamer’s idea that want to be said and in what context it happens.
Code switching often occurs in bilingual community as an alternative way in using more than one languages. Code switching is the most important in the bilingual community because code switching is part of bilingual itself. From the conversation of the gamer in the dungeon party of Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second (SEA), found that there are almost 50 percents of the data that can be categorized into Code-Switching, because all of the data consist of code which can only be understood by the community. However, here there are only twenty data which were analyzed in Code-Switching section analysis that is focused on the meaning of bilingualism Code-Switching of two different languages.
In this game, there were found four phenomenon of Language Change that occurs in the gamer’s online chat conversation based on the theory of Holmes. They are Gamer’s Language, Slang word, Pidgin English and Code-Switching. The reason of why the gamer uses Slang word, Code-Switching and Gamer’s Language shows that the gamer wants to impress the other gamer with their knowledge of the gaming term and to make the online chatting conversation more interesting and fun. Those phenomenon occur when the gamers want to emphasize or amplify the message, to make the online chatting fun and not boring, to raise status and to show the linguistic skills, and to mark the community’s identity. Also sometimes because of the lack of education of English without considering that they are using Pidgin English to communicate and do it continuously. Here the phenomenon of Gamer’s Language,
Code-Switching, Slang, and Pidgin are categorized as Language Change because the gamer feel free to use it in communicate each other like a code or new word of innovation in playing online game.
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