From sociolinguistic perception to strategic action in the study of social meaning

We present a new paradigm investigating social meaning through strategic action. More precisely, we present an experimental technique (a textual role-playing game developed with the Ren'Py engine), which we view as an enrichment of the matched-guise technique (MGT). In this paradigm the explicit response scales of the MGT are substituted for strategic choices in a video game. We argue that studying social meaning experimentally through looking at its effects on participants' actions is more interactive than the classic paradigm. We compare the results from both the video game and a more classic version of the paradigm based on scales, conducted with the same linguistic materials, and we show that researchers who use only the MGT may be missing some crucial aspects of the social meanings of the linguistic phenomena they are studying. We also argue that a paradigm based on strategic action is better equipped to study the social, political, and economic outcomes for the users of those linguistic variants, and therefore to contribute to understanding phenomena like linguistic discrimination.