Identity and Meaning-Making in Teenagers’ Second Life Activity

EL 2073 Second Language Acquisition No. 971002033

Profession: Mei-Ya Liang Name: Hogan

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Second Language Acquisition - Final Paper

Identity and Meaning-Making in Teenagers’

Second Life Activity

Abstract

The paper contains two main theses. The first one is the process of finding

identity and the second one is the process of meaning-making. Both are done through

the use of language. Language here is a powerful tool. It is said to be fluxional.

Though grammar may appear important, the most stunning thing I realized over the

past two months is that there is no such thing that is so stiff in the world of language,

not the use, the meaning, or the pronunciation. What’s more, it changes when we use

it and because of that, it facilitates our need to communicate with this special

characteristic. Even, there are so much variations and possibilities in it, with which we

can create language play. This of course happens most often in activities, role playing

for example. The paper makes use of the students’ on-line chat in Second Life,

through a series of small games. Their situation is of all the most interesting, being



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transitional between the two worlds of reality and virtual; two sets of linguistic

background, one in Chinese, the other in English.

I will discuss more and deeper into these two aspects. In the first part of identity,

I put forth the idea of joking relation, which is very useful in looking at the students’

interactions and behaviors. Then I move on to discuss their conversation and the way

identity is found or being constructed.

The second part would be that of meaning-making. Creating new meanings in a

peer group can strengthen their bond. The cohesion inside the group is stronger with

the increase of exclusive signs. And I see many signs which I didn’t know used in

their conversation, as a tool of sharing meanings, and again, conforming to the

identity.



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Introduction

The record of on-line chat is a suitable material to learn how teenage students

associate themselves with the peer group. I am most interested in the interaction

between them, the students, since I have the background of sociology learning. From

this respect, I will take some of the idea from behaviorism, along with the knowledge

we learn from ecological aspect. The environment is highly emphasized, rather than

the Chomskian perspective of innate ability of language learning. I look from the

point of view of people’s interaction, and thus conclude the construction of meaning.

Lots of the students in class agreed that language is mainly something about

communication and meaning making. It is all about transporting meaning from one

person to another (speaker and listener). Meaning appears when the language is being

used by people, not generating all by itself. A quick example from our Theater

Performance this semester will explain for me. (One thing I just found that in

role-play, meaning is highly fluent, unfixed, which I assume it comes from the

transitional state of people back and forth from reality to fiction.) I played the

character Tom in a play.

TOM: His position is that of a shipping clerk, mother.

AMANDA: A job you will have if you have more get-up!



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The “get-up” here originally means the ambitious and aggressive intention for a

working man, with which a man earns himself a better job with better payment. The

meaning remains as the condition stays the same. But after I had my physical

paralysis, the pun was thus created. The circumstance now was that I, unable to

neither stand nor walk, sat in the wheelchair, talking to the person who played my

mother, Amanda. Now read the text again and see how it goes differently. The

“get-up” changes from an attitude to the physical condition that I wasn’t able to do.

From this example which the actors in the play found hilarious, I’m trying to say that

the meaning is never fixed. Instead, it comes along with the environment and the

people in it, which according to van Lier, this is called “the affordance.”

Likewise, in the on-line chat in Second Life, the students underwent a similar

process of entering the world of fiction, where they took up different roles. But in the

meantime, they didn’t seclude themselves completely from the reality. They brought

some pieces of real life into role-play, the virtual world of Second Life. Therefore,

they not only played a role, but also kept their original identities in reality and it

became more interesting when they were in fact having a dual self participating in the

chatting activity.



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Method

Joking relation and relation of avoidance

First I am going to explain the idea of “joking relation” and the oppositional idea

of “relation of avoidance”, which I learned this semester in Spencer’s Renaissance

Drama. (David Graeber, Manners, Deference, and Private Property, 696-703) Relation

of avoidance is something that comes from the system of hierarchy. It is mainly

constructed by one’s property and is discreetly categorized. Take the relation between

the noble and peasant for example; the noble owns wealth and this furthermore

enhance their higher status, compared to the peasant, who owns less in fortune. The

contrary idea is the “joking relation”, which simply means the opposite. It doesn’t

necessarily have something to do with “cracking a joke”, but much more to do with

the violation of normal regulation. The relationships of joking are rather loose and

arbitrary, compared to that of avoidance. In tribes, people don’t vary much in terms of

property, and thus they’re not stiffly categorized into different hierarchy. The reason

why I pick this idea as one of my major method to explain the students’ on-line chat is

obvious-they’re in joking relation. Students, or as we say peers, are on the same level.

That is, they are not differentiated from category to category. The relation between

them is easy, relaxing, instead of tense, highly classified. So of course cracking a joke



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is in the realm of joking relation because it violates the common usage of language

and creates new meanings in it.

Identity

Building identity is another main theme in this paper. A little psychological

knowledge, according to Erikson (1959), he pointed out in a chart that there are 8

stages, with each has its own crisis, throughout the life-long process of

“self-synthesis”, in which the main crisis during the stage of teenage is finding one’s

own identity. At this age, teenagers tend to look for a group they can identify with and

from which they solidify their identity. They interaction is important because how he

or she plays a part in it determines how others judge him or her and hence influencing

the identification.

Meaning-making

The meaning-making is the third part of my perspective to look into their chat.

This is also the part where I am going to take some of the approaches from

representation. But unlike the Peircean theory, I emphasize more on the interpretation

of sentences, how students encode and decode. Based on the essay After Babel:

Aspects of Language and Translation by George Steiner (1998), in which he viewed

translation from the perspective of language study, I learned that every speaker and

listener (sender-receiver model) is a translator who decodes the information. It



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involves the restructuring that occurs in information-processing (McLaughlin, 1987).

But note that a translation is not merely imitating but independent as he or she is.

Hence the process of representation is a lot more complex than I thought. At least I

know one thing, “grammar is not prerequisite of communication, rather it is a

byproduct of communication.”(Hopper, 1998) The emphasis on correctness is not so

important here but how students translate the information.

Discussion

Identity in joking relation and relation of avoidance

The topic of “self” and the development involved in language learning/using

appeal me, too. “Self exists objectively from the outset by virtue of its embodiment”

(Butterworth, 1999). Self is constantly being constructed, not fixed. A person forms

the idea of self, or even, his or her identity among people all the time. It is a flowing

movement of changing and adjusting to the interaction with people. Now I am

hyper-sensitive to this word, “interaction” because that’s what it is all about,

interacting with others, having conversation. From joking relation and relation of

avoidance, I discuss the identity.

I selected some of the sentences to form my idea, such as where Rampton (2002)

points out that “teenagers spend enormous effort in experimenting with and



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establishing language rituals that create and solidify their identities and sense of

self.” It’s clear that I am going to use the conversation, i.e. the on-line chat, between

the students, especially Stella’s, since I set out with social respect. What’s more, the

main theme, ecological linguistic, is more of a study about relation between people

and the environment, altogether in a social world. And the reason why I bold-mark the

word “ritual” is because this is actually a fairly crucial idea. In The Uses of Goods by

Mary Douglas (p.43), she manifested the idea of ritual in the paragraph of fixing

public meaning. Ritual, in essence, is like a ceremony, suggesting the action where

one thing moves from one status to another in a public sense. Just like graduation

ceremony as one type of ritual, students move from “undergraduates” to “graduates”.

It shows the change of identities. Also, being public is important, too. It requires more

than two people to acknowledge the change.

We are going to see a perfect example here. At [03:44], Stella tried to respond to

what Jess said at [03:43], “stella looks stupid but smart indeed”. She said, “look smart

and indeed smart” in return, exclaiming that her achievement of solving the riddle was

a well-done performance (The P1 in types of language play.)(Cook, 2000) that made

her noticeable. She wanted everyone to know that actually she’s not stupid. This the

time when her words became a kind of ritual, making known by all the others her

change of status, or people’s image of her. Apparently, Stella didn’t want to be labeled



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“stupid” in the peer group. Therefore, by this chance she proved that by her

performance and by using her own language, which is grammatical parallel to the one

Jess said, she could move from the original “Stulla” to a new person who is not

stupid.

The first example gave us a glance at how Stella built her identity among her

peers during the conversation. Speaking of it, chat record is in fact a good material

because it is daily and casual, enough to show us the habits of them. They have the

habit of chatting on-line in such platform as MSN. I believe the chatting on Second

Life is not so different. As a consequence, their relation in reality was brought to the

virtual world. By that I was saying that although they took up roles, they still showed

the actual self in this activity. Using the idea of joking relation, the line is not

discreetly separated. Just the opposite, we have to think of the world outside the

Internet so as to look at the text with more contemplation.

[03:31] Stella Summerwind: Isabella eats shit ^^

[04:09] Stella Summerwind: claidy gp die!

One reason I say this is because sometimes Stella addressed to the same person

but she called her with her real name, instead of the user name they had established.

In the text above, she was talking to the same person, Isabella, whose real name in

real life was Claidy. The boundary was being broken down. This jumping between



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two identities is the flowing of meaning, unfixed identity of two worlds, again the

idea of joking relation.

Another thing about joking relation is that it often involves the action of attack.

Joking attack, like young animals playing together, which in the eyes of ours seems

like fighting, is the action of retaining the joking relation. I interpret some of the

dialogues as the so-called joking attack.

(a) [04:14] Nina Arnica: stulla!!!

[04:14] Stella Summerwind: what’s wrong with u Nina!

(b) [03:31] Stella Summerwind: Isabella eats shit ^^

(c) [04:09] Stella Summerwind: claidy gp die!

The above seemingly rude words were actually the evidence of joking attack.

This is way how joking relation is maintained. Like I said, if two people keep a

distance, as if a line is drawn between them, then they’re in the relation of avoidance.

Literally, they may not touch each other or, even, speak to each other. In the joking

relation, however, the participants are free and open. They may behave relatively

unregulated. And the behaviors include argument, questioning, criticism, ambiguities,

and the multiplicity of meaning, such as puns and jokes. Based on P2 in language play,

use in congregation and/or intimate interaction, Stella answered the mocking from

Nina by talking back. This can be seen more like the casual interaction between good



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friends instead of admonishment. “What’s wrong with you!” can be interpreted in a

harsh way. But still, this can suggest the intimacy, seeing that only real, nice friends

can call each other names without harming the harmony. By doing so, she can actually

pull both of them closer, which is good when there was competition going on and they

were in the same team. The joking relation was to affirm the intimacy.

By speaking dirty language to the person at the opposite team, also who had just

mistakenly shot her to death, Stella here suggested the antagonism against Isabella, P3

in language play. But after all, they’re still friends in reality so she didn’t want to put

the words too harsh. Therefore, she added the expressional mark “^^” to show that she

was not actually angry and to soften the voice of that sentence which can be

categorized as a non-verbal cues. In the world of Internet, we are not able to see or

hear when only the sentences can be seen. The basic tools for communication such as

expressions, gestures, and even the voices or tones are deprived. When only words are

left on the screen to be seen, lots of information is lost in this process. Thus, some of

the adjustment is invented. Emoticons are most commonly seen and popular for it is

easy to use and grasp. The simply expressional marks are like smiling eyes “^^” or the

smiling face “” (made up by a colon plus a right bracket). These are to facilitate our

needs to communicate when lack of the above-mentioned mechanism.



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In the previous example she showed antagonism because Isabella was the rival in

the other team when she was, at the same time, the person who killed Stella at the

beginning. But this is much harsher than “Isabella eats shit ^^”. Therefore I

categorized it as the inversion of social order as to tell someone to die (P5). Of course,

this is also “alternative reality” so Stella was being tough to the character in the game

though here she was calling the actual name in the reality, which further intensifies

the words. The joking relation here is somewhat different to Nina and to Isabella. I

consider it to be that when joking-attacking Nina, it was a sign of membership. But to

Isabella, she attacked her in that they were enemies. Still, it doesn’t mean that they are

against each other in reality. So to pull the action of attack back a little bit, she applied

the emoticon. This, however, is on the term of relation of avoidance. Because she

needed to uphold the friendship in reality in order to differ from it, Stella took two

different approaches, one to Isabella, the other to Claidy.

Meaning-making process

Again and again the Van Lier reminds us in his book that, from the ecological

perspective, language is not merely the mixture of grammar, sentences, but something

alive with people using it, making meaning of it. And because of that, the language

use differs from person to person, each having characteristic his or her own and thus



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creating the presence of self. (108) On page 109, it is even more firmly asserted,

“language is not a ‘fixed code’”. On page 110, the author gives us several aspects of

signs, among which I will focus more on the artifacts, the human-made ones. These

happen when in certain circumstances (on-line chat) words come to their new

meanings, uses.

People are the machines of making meanings whereas the language people use is

more like a play ground for all the things to make happen.

On page 55(van Lier), as the opening, “language is embedded in the physical and

social world, and is part of other meaning-making systems;” I agree with that. On the

other hand, I hold more doubt on Chomsky’s theory about innate ability to acquire a

language. The first example he gives us on page 56, the “THNAK you VEry MUCH!”

is an evident that we do learn from the environment, from people around; and we use

the language, the phrases for example, to interact and communicate. “This phrase

becomes a tool, an instrument to get attention and to cause merriment,” I immediately

think of that in the midterm paper, I pointed out that Stella did try a lot to achieve this,

to gain attention or, most of all, to cause merriment.

Stella, from my daily observation, is a girl who tries to be cute. She’s cute in the

way that she’s real to herself and shows real feelings. She might not be as skillful as

Matt in English, but she has her own ways of using language and often brings us



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laughter! In the conversation, Stella used a lot of words to show her excitement or

enjoyment such as “ya” which she uses in real life as well. Plus, she’s not coy when it

comes to jokes, even when those jokes are coming toward her. For example at [03:44]

she said “look smart and indeed smart” to face a joke on her. This shows that she can

even turn it into her own advantage by altering the word a little bit. This usage in the

form of grammatical parallel tells us that Stella can be really smart!

On page 67, I find something related to my report. As it says, “Indices…can be

used analytically as indicators of the success or failure of a person’s linguistic sign

work…” (Wortham, 1994) It is a matter of “the open flow between iconic and

symbolic systems”, which I think it would play a major part in conversation.

But “ya” doesn’t play a crucial role in interaction. Another type of language play

that appears the most is probably the non-verbal cues, i.e. emotional symbols or icons

for expressions. However, these symbols she used are somewhat different, especially

that at [03:53] Stella Summerwind: =皿= 凹. This sign signifies a rock gesture. Since

it’s composed by Chinese character, non-native speaker would not be able to

comprehend it. Then again, this is a powerful and quick way to express one’s feeling

about the situation or the event. Others are like “^^” which is a much simpler one

suggesting smiling eyes. Other players might use “” or “lol” which are more



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commonly seen in English speaking countries. I saw these in comments on Youtube or

other websites a lot.

They are the iconic sign which imitates the human facial expression in reality. Of

course, it is not 100% similar but we learn to be accustomed to it. And this set of sign

internalizes nito our perception and we don’t find them hard to accept. Take me for

instance. I at first couldn’t make anything out of this sign “=皿= 凹” because I was

not at the same structure of sign-making. But after informed by my friends who had

known its meaning, i.e. the interpretant in Peircean triadic structure of sign, I can

understand perfectly what the speaker means when this combination of Chinese

characters and equal marks appear on the screen. Then we have the common ground

on this sign. In response to the topic of identity, I can from then on identify myself

with the exact group of people who also use this set of sign making.

Language plays an important part in it. It has the ability to create signs, to encode;

it also has the function of deciphering them, therefore, to decode. Before I can reach

the common ground of this sign-making or meaning-making process, I had to make a

detour by someone else’s explanation, especially when the words had turned away

from its original meaning. The emoticon, though composed of “皿” and “凹” in

Chinese, it has nothi8ng to do with them. It neither has the interpretant of “a plate”

nor “being dented”. The same like other Chinese character used in sign-making, the



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meaning’s been shifted. Without the knowledge, people would not be able to

comprehend. Take “囧”(ㄐㄩㄥˇequivalence to 炯) and “尛”(ㄇㄚˊequivalence to

麼) for example, neither of them acquire the original meaning in the character in the

world of Internet. When on-line speakers use them, the former one indicates the facial

expression and the latter one, a little more complicated, is the common slang in

Taiwanese “三小”, close to that of “what the…” in English.

As what I nailed down in explaining joking relation, parodies contain semantic

instability and multiplicity of meaning, such as puns and jokes. This part I focus on

how Stella used language play, how she played with jokes. Switching codes, from one

language to another, can be semantic instability. This brings me back to Cook’s types

of language play, in which S1 stands for the intermediate meaning, foreign language

as one example. And jokes may provide meaning-drifting. Non-verbal cues like

emoticon.

Some more examples are presented as follow,

(a) [04:07] Stella Summerwind: amber da de how!

(b) [04:30] Stella Summerwind: amber wants to da deer

The code-switching of pronunciation clearly shows that the speaker is in the

Chinese and English speaking environment. Therefore, the affordance we talked today

becomes available. On page 92, figure 4.2 shows us the correlation of perception,



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interpretation, and action, given the environment of affordance. Affordance is a big

influence that affects the participants’ action and perception. Again, if a person is

solely dependent on mono-linguistic structure, either English or Chinese, he or she is

not able to perceive these sentences, more likely to be puzzled because the above

utterances are clearly set in the grammar of English (Subject + Verb) but the verb is

transformed into Chinese (or Pin-Yin). “Da” means “打” in Chinese which in English

can stand for “hit” or “fight”, depending on the occasion. “Da de how” is even more

complicated for English native speaker who, I believe, has not experience of using

phrases like “打的好”.

“It is action potential, and it emerges as we interact with the physical and social

world” (van Lier, p.92) to “affordances arise out of participation and use, and learning

opportunities arise as a consequence of participation and use.” (Auyang, 2000, p.62)

During the on-line chat, students were playing and participating in the game. And

because of this participation of the students, the affordance thus existed. The

environment provides the opportunities for them to use English but also Chinese at

some certain occasion (Da jia). As it says on page 101 (van Lier), “learners… can

orient to those cues and act upon them appropriately in interactions.” In conversation,

students, i.e. the participants, can modify their language use according to the others,

and to the affordance. Example is around [03:49], Stella noticed that in this game,



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they used “da jia” instead of “fight”, so she altered her word choice and at [03:52] she

screamed “打架!打架!打架!”

Result

I am actually doing the task of translation, translating the conversation on the

basis of social learning into something that’s hidden in their dialogues, such as the

way they maintain relationships or adjust themselves in different linguistic context of

English and Chinese. As George Steiner stated in After Babel, he used the example of

children language. He said, children language is not merely the imitation of adults’. It

is independent in itself. So is translation. Translation is not the byproduct of the

original. Discussion is not merely the imitation of their conversation or the byproduct

after the activity, but independent in itself, trying to create new meaning out of the

material.

I see that how teenage students find a place for them in their peer group. Though

it is generally believed that there is no way for the same level learners to learn from

each other and improve at any degree, I agree with what Rogoff (1993) said that

interaction can also be efficient for leaning. Some more knowledge from psychology,

Piaget proposed the theory of stages of genetic epistemology, saying that from the

stage of infant to that of toddler and eventually to teenager, human beings go through



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several stages of cognitive ability. At their teens, teenagers can view themselves from

outside, capable of looking at themselves from the perspective of others. Elkind (1967)

then went further on this issue, saying that teenagers tend to put themselves under the

inspection of imaginary audience. Vygotsky (1978) has the theory of contextualism,

reaffirming the importance of interaction, people to people and people to the

environment. From all theorist above and the observation of those on-line chat record,

we can be sure that this interaction, whether between people or between the social

environment, they gain more ability of identifying themselves in the group.

In the relation of joking, students can laugh with each other, experiencing

language play, where meanings mingled together, and thence bring their identity

closer, more centered. Language plays a vital role in it as a fluxional tool for students

to use, to create a world full of unfixed meaning. And during the construction of new

meaning, students find pleasure in it. All in all, they reinforce the set of

meaning-making and sign-using, which can unite the group and even seclude the

outsiders. People who fail to get into the group are those who aren’t able to

comprehend the meaning or sign they create in the jokes or puns.

I was one of the outsiders. But in order to look into their language, I have to

learn from my friends. Some language uses might be exclusive to them. And only

when I break this code can I learn it and fit myself into it.



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Reference

Butterworth. ( 1999)

Cook. (2000)

Douglas, Mary. Fixing public meaning, The Uses of Goods, 43

Elkind, D. (1967) Egocentrism in adolescence, Child Development, 38

Erikson (1959)

Graeber, David. Manners, Deference, and Private Property, 696-703

Hopper (1998)

McLaughlin. (1987)

Rampton. (2002)

Rogoff (1993)

Steiner, George. (1998) After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation

Piaget, J. (1972) Intellectual development from adolescence to adulthood, Human

Development, 15, 1-12

Van Lier, L. 55-56, 108-109

Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in society.

Wortham, (1994)

Identity and Meaning-Making in Teenagers’ Second Life Activity

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