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ABSTRACT Online virtual worlds provide a unique environment for language instruction and learning, yet there are few longitudinal studies that chronicle the workings of existing communities on avatar-based graphical platforms. This study focuses on Cypris Chat, a nonprofit English learning and teaching group within Linden Lab’s Second Life. In this study, I discuss the structure of this community, the factors behind this group’s development from five members in 2008 to 882 in 2016, and the reasons for its appeal as a virtual world language learning group. I also examine the ways in which teaching and learning take place there. Although the study is primarily descriptive and ethnographic, it also makes use of three theoretical frameworks to analyze different aspects of the group. The digital habitats framework of Wenger, White, and Smith (2009) was used to judge Cypris’ efficacy as a working online community. Lim’s (2009) Six Learnings framework was utilized to explore how adequately the group made use of affordances specific to learning opportunities in virtual worlds. Finally, Holzman’s (2010) interpretation of sociocultural learning theory was used to analyze recorded discourse of formal and informal language learning activities. Data were collected through interviews of 21 Cypris staff and members; a majority of participants were adults of Japanese nationality, but members from Europe and the Middle East also participated. Participant observation and my personal experiences with Cypris’ history were also utilized, both to inform the development of interview questions and to determine the long-lasting appeal of the group; observations drew on my eight years experience as resident researcher and volunteer tutor at Cypris. Finally, disparate learning activities, both formal lessons and informal impromptu interactions during extracurricular conversations and games, were recorded, and select incidents were analyzed through discourse analysis. Results suggest that members’ perception of the importance of both formal activities and informal socializing outside of class was crucial to the continued existence of the group. Additionally, they also suggest that the group’s long-lasting appeal is related to the adventurous spirit of key members identified as Internet early adopters. As for teaching and learning within the community, observations indicated that tutors and learners alike took advantage of both traditional instructional methods and the unique affordances of the Second Life environment, both within and outside formal instruction at Cypris. Conclusions suggest that both Wenger et al.’s (2009) digital habitats and Lim’s (2009) Six Learnings frameworks are robust measures of online learning communities, and Holzman’s (2010) interpretation of sociocultural learning theory was shown to be applicable to both exploration of learning through play and informal interactions as well as more structured lessons in online virtual world learning groups like Cypris. This study contributes to the body of research on models of online language education, multimodal learning in virtual worlds, and the potentially revolutionary possibilities and challenges inherent in language learning communities such as Cypris. / Applied Linguistics

Denna uppsats undersöker hur den materiella spelvärlden i The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt konstrueras och presenteras, med fokus på medialiserade figurationer, rumslighet och transmediala berättelseelement. Med utgångspunkt i posthumanistisk teori och materiell semiotik kartlägger studien hur den virtuella miljön i spelet också fungerar som en aktiv deltagare i spelupplevelsen, snarare än en passiv bakgrund till huvudberättelsen. Genom att tillämpa Espen Aarseths variabla modell analyserar studien hur spelets design och interaktiva objekt fungerar som semiotiska agenter. Resultaten visar att spelvärldens rumsliga element, såsom väder, topologi och arkitektur, spelar en avgörande roll i att forma spelvärldens rumsliga upplevelse och narrativ. Vidare visar analysen att interaktiva objekt och sidokaraktärer, trots olika begränsningar avinteraktionsmöjligheter, erbjuder visuella och audiella ledtrådar som bidrar till spelvärldens tillblivande. Studien visar att spelvärlden i The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt är ömsesidigt konstituerad med spelarens handlingar, där varje interaktion formar och omformas av den dynamiska och performativa spelvärlden. / This thesis explores how the material game world in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is constructed and presented, focusing on mediatized figurations, spatiality, and transmedia narrative elements. Grounded in posthumanist theory and material semiotics, the study maps how the virtual environment also functions as an active participant in the gameplay experience, rather than just a passive backdrop to the game story. Utilizing Espen Aarseth’s variable model the analysis investigates how the game’s design and interactive objects act as semiotic agents. The findings reveal that the spatial elements of the game world, such as weather, topology, and architecture, play a crucial role in shaping the spatial experience and narrative of the game world. Furthermore, the analysis shows that interactive objects and side characters, despite varying levels of interaction possibilities, provide visual and auditory cues that contribute to the coming into being of the game world. The study demonstrates that the game world in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is mutually constituted with the player’s actions, where each interaction shapes and is shaped by the dynamic and performative game environment.

This thesis focuses on Astrid Lindgren and film tourism in the Vimmerby region in Sweden. Lindgren introduced her imagined worlds in her books and films, which was inspired by her personal experience of growing up in Vimmerby. Film location sites and other film tourism places around Vimmerby indicate the relationship between the imagination of the author and the local region. This thesis draws on the concept of imagination and Stijn Reijnders research about Places of the Imagination, as well as Abby Waysdorf and Reijnders research on film tourism as an imaginative experience. By focusing on these sites and the advertisement, the main research question is what experience these sites offer for the film tourist and how they present the local identity and imagined world by Lindgren. This thesis introduces a new approach called imaginative archaeology. It describes film tourism as an archaeological reconstruction of imagination and the imagined world, that is presented on screen. As a result, the film tourism sites offer an archaeological reconstruction. The film sites can be seen as archaeological sites, the tourism sites in Vimmerby provide traces of Lindgren’s imagination, the theme park can be seen as an open-air museum and the film museum offers a museum experience for the film tourist.

This thesis examines the results of a large-scale sociolinguistic study on the use of English in two universities in China. The aim of the thesis is to determine the sociolinguistic realities of the use of English in higher education in China. The universities were selected on the basis of their unique status in China’s higher education hierarchy. One university was a private institute reliant on student fees for its income, and the other a state-funded university under the supervision of the Chinese Ministry of Education. A sociolinguistic survey was conducted involving some 490 respondents at these universities between early 2012 and mid-2013. It was specifically aimed at describing the use of the English language in the formal education of students. The study reports on the status and functions of English at the universities, as well as the attitudes of various stakeholders towards English (and other languages). It also examines their beliefs about English. English is considered in a number of contexts: first, the context of language contact, of English alongside other languages and language varieties on the two university campuses; second, of English as part of the linguistic worlds of Chinese students who switch between languages in their daily lives, both in their education as well as their private lives; and third, of the spread and use of English in terms of the physical and virtual movement of people across spaces. The findings of the study indicate that the increasing use of English in the formal education at these universities is having an impact on the ways in which Chinese students are learning their course materials, and even more notably in the myriad ways these students are using multiple languages to negotiate their everyday lives. As university students in China become increasingly bilingual, their ability to move across spaces is shown to increase, both in the ‘real’ world, as well as in their Internet and entertainment lives. / Linguistics / D. Lit. et Phil. (Linguistics)

This dissertation is about the nature of perspectival thoughts and the context-sensitivity of the language used to express them. It focuses on two kinds of perspectival thoughts: ‘subjective' evaluative thoughts about matters of personal taste, such as 'Beetroot is delicious' or 'Skydiving is fun', and first-personal or de se thoughts about oneself, such as 'I am hungry' or 'I have been fooled.' The dissertation defends of a novel form of relativism about truth - the idea that the truth of some (but not all) perspectival thought and talk is relative to the perspective of an evaluating subject or group. In Part I, I argue that the realm of ‘subjective' evaluative thought and talk whose truth is perspective-relative includes attributions of knowledge of the form 'S knows that p.' Following a brief introduction (chapter 1), chapter 2 presents a new, error-theoretic objection against relativism about knowledge attributions. The case for relativism regarding knowledge attributions rests on the claim that relativism is the only view that explains all of the empirical data from speakers' use of the word "know" without recourse to an error theory. In chapter 2, I show that the relativist can only account for sceptical paradoxes and ordinary epistemic closure puzzles if she attributes a problematic form of semantic blindness to speakers. However, in 3 I show that all major competitor theories - forms of invariantism and contextualism - are subject to equally serious error-theoretic objections. This raises the following fundamental question for empirical theorising about the meaning of natural language expressions: If error attributions are ubiquitous, by which criteria do we evaluate and compare the force of error-theoretic objections and the plausibility of error attributions? I provide a number of criteria and argue that they give us reason to think that relativism's error attributions are more plausible than those of its competitors. In Part II, I develop a novel unified account of the content and communication of perspectival thoughts. Many relativists regarding ‘subjective' thoughts and Lewisians about de se thoughts endorse a view of belief as self-location. In chapter 4, I argue that the self-location view of belief is in conflict with the received picture of linguistic communication, which understands communication as the transmission of information from speaker's head to hearer's head. I argue that understanding mental content and speech act content in terms of sequenced worlds allows a reconciliation of these views. On the view I advocate, content is modelled as a set of sequenced worlds - possible worlds ‘centred' on a group of individuals inhabiting the world at some time. Intuitively, a sequenced world is a way a group of people may be. I develop a Stalnakerian model of communication based on sequenced worlds content, and I provide a suitable semantics for personal pronouns and predicates of personal taste. In chapter 5, I show that one of the advantages of this model is its compatibility with both nonindexical contextualism and truth relativism about taste. I argue in chapters 5 and 6 that the empirical data from eavesdropping, retraction, and disagreement cases supports a relativist completion of the model, and I show in detail how to account for these phenomena on the sequenced worlds view.