Multilingualism Between Inclusion and Exclusion: A Social Semiotic Analysis of Invented Languages in Chants of Sennaar

Yuhuan Cheng and Guorong Hao

English Language Teaching, 2025, vol. 18, issue 6, 97

Abstract: In an era of digitization, video games constitute an ideal site for examining linguistic and cultural diversity. As one of the important semiotic resources in video games, invented languages create a space for representing different social meanings. This study investigates how invented languages in Chants of Sennaar are ideologically represented through different linguistic and semiotic resources. Findings indicate that invented languages become a site of ideological contestation for social inclusion and concomitantly social exclusion. On one hand, invented languages as an inclusive form of multilingualism can diversify knowledge base, bridge cultural divide and assemble semiotic repertoires. On the other hand, multilingualism can reproduce social inequality in the access to playing the game, consequently recreating homogeneity and socially differentiated practices. By analyzing the semiotic representations of invented languages, this study contributes to the nuanced understanding of multilingual studies by expanding the scope of research inquiry on video games, an under-explored but increasingly prominently research area in sociolinguistics. The study concludes by addressing the sociolinguistic dimensions of invented languages in relation to a broader context of social practices.

Date: 2025
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