How we learn the jargon

We intend a aggregation of requests here on the site from researchers disagreeable to think you World of Warcraft players. Everybody with a investigate grant, apparently, wants to think you -- your psychology, your interaction, and the relationship you hit with your avatar. We intend so some requests, actually, that we usually hit to pass -- we're not smart sufficiency to opt which ones are legit and which ones aren't, and if we posted them all, we'd do nothing but post requests for analyse answers every day. But I like the way alckly has done her investigate over on WoW Ladies LJ: she posted a discourse most WoW jargon, and you crapper wager everyone's answers correct away.

We definitely hit lots of argot to go around, from LFG to twinks to PuGs and a aggregation more. But what's most interesting most every of these answers, to me, is the way it spreads. There's a lowercase bit of Googling and investigate going on, but really it's a rattling ethnic abstract -- you wager "wtb" in the trade channel, and then you ask someone you know what it means (rather than hunting it up somewhere else). Thus, definitions of the terms are rattling organic: "pst" could stingy "pssst, here's a whisper" or "please beam tell," and still because they both stingy the aforementioned thing, both meanings propagate. Likewise, practice tends to be a rattling ethnic abstract -- the person who types "LFG strat need heals" won't identify "would u like 2 go to strat?"

Quite fascinating. Unfortunately, I don't know how multipurpose this category of analyse is for actualised investigate (as I see it, things hit to be such more quantitative than communicative like this). But I always love chance straight from players how these things impact ingame. Interesting that something that might be seen as an individualist experience (asking friends or guildies most argot to see it) is actually a rattling ordinary one.

Tags: googling, interaction, jargon, language, lfg, psychology, pug, pugs, research, social, spreading, studies, viral, wow, wtb, wts