Discourse Community Proposal
The discourse community that I want to focus on this semester is the community that follows the Metal Gear Solid franchise. This community is very argumentative and likes to have discussions about how certain plot points actually were different than what others see them as. The plot is considered to be very confusing as it spans across 4 versions of the same character across 9 different games that are scattered across the chronology of the franchise.
The community has several texts that argue about different things between the plot and characters. One text is a discussion about a plot point called “The Boss’s Will”. This discussion revolved around the ending of Metal Gear Solid 3, and how Snake’s mentor passed on her ideology about war and violence across countries, but this idea is commonly misunderstood as many people believe it to be a way to end all war across the globe. The ideology has not been fully understood yet, but it seems like the community is closer to figuring out the true idea behind the “Boss’s Will”.
You will typically see this community communicate over forums and Reddit threads to discuss different ideas and theories. The documents typically are just threads on Reddit as no one has really published anything about the community as a whole.
I want to understand the community's language practices and why they use specific forms of language in their threads and replies to each other. They use an interesting broken up language when talking in a more comedic style, but will switch to serious and correct text when discussing something serious or when they are trying to be in a more serious manner than they typically are. It would be interesting to look at how some of these people think of the ideas and theories that they come up with as some of them can be very interesting to think about and to consider when looking at the story as a
whole. The ideas can typically vary from person to person and are very considerate when they think about how it would actually affect the perception of the franchise and its characters as a whole.
The community has several texts that argue about different things between the plot and characters. One text is a discussion about a plot point called “The Boss’s Will”. This discussion revolved around the ending of Metal Gear Solid 3, and how Snake’s mentor passed on her ideology about war and violence across countries, but this idea is commonly misunderstood as many people believe it to be a way to end all war across the globe. The ideology has not been fully understood yet, but it seems like the community is closer to figuring out the true idea behind the “Boss’s Will”.
You will typically see this community communicate over forums and Reddit threads to discuss different ideas and theories. The documents typically are just threads on Reddit as no one has really published anything about the community as a whole.
I want to understand the community's language practices and why they use specific forms of language in their threads and replies to each other. They use an interesting broken up language when talking in a more comedic style, but will switch to serious and correct text when discussing something serious or when they are trying to be in a more serious manner than they typically are. It would be interesting to look at how some of these people think of the ideas and theories that they come up with as some of them can be very interesting to think about and to consider when looking at the story as a
whole. The ideas can typically vary from person to person and are very considerate when they think about how it would actually affect the perception of the franchise and its characters as a whole.