Towards a Semiotics of Roleplaying Games

[GB Steve]

Well, the choice of title reminded me of Sokal's hoax, Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity, but the articles do seem interesting. I'm sure it will all make more sense when it get round to gaming.

Here's another to throw into the melting pot:
http://ptgptb.org/0015/whoesart2.html

[ejh]

Yeah, the title was supposed to be amusingly, pretentiously academic, but I'm writing seriously.

[Cemendur]

If I hadn't read the first response and your response to it, I would have stopped reading after the first paragraph of your blog.  . .

You have a link to Mark Turner. I was wondering if you have studied Metaphor Theory? I have been working on a number of projects on role-playing and Metaphor Theory. Turner has expanded on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's Metaphor Theory as initially expressed in their "Metaphors We Live By". I haven't yet read much of Turner's work, what I have mostly _goes in a different direction_ than I am heading. I would be highly interested in hearing from anyone who has studied Metaphor Theory (of Linguistics) and Role-playing Theory.

[ejh]

Cemendur: I've read Metaphors We Live By, The Moral Imagination, The Body In The Mind, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, Death is the Mother of Beauty, More Than Cool Reason, Mental Spaces, Mappings in Thought and Language, and The Literary Mind, as well as some of the papers that Turner and Fauconnier have made available on the web.

All of these are in the back of my mind as I am writing this.

This was all several years ago that I did this reading, though; I haven't read anything more recent, such as Philosophy In The Flesh or the like.

I am drawing more closely on the collaboration between Fauconnier and Turner than on the classic work on metaphor by Lakoff and Johnson, which is one reason that you haven't seen me explicitly talking about metaphors so far.  I don't think what F & T are doing is in conflict with L & J's work, so much as it is working on a different level -- L & J were dealing more with general cultural patterns of metaphor, while F & T tend to look closer at individual usages.

I'd be absolutely thrilled to see anything you've written about roleplaying games that draws on these sources, as they are definitely my favorite theorists of language and meaning.

[ejh]

BTW, I just added a note after the first paragraph which will hopefully indicate in what spirit to take it.