ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on current conceptions of the language of new media, the complexity of a sociolinguistic analysis of people's talk about game experiences, and interview data. Building on play theory, the study of game literacy references elements of computer-mediated interactivity and its relation to new media discourses of play. Generalizations about the aesthetics of ergodics are somewhat meaningless, necessitating reliance on case-by-case analyses of individual cultural artifacts/texts, but the categorization of these phenomena as dependent on a human-computer feedback loop is accurate and specific. Discourses of interactive media play are dependent on human communication with technology. Reflexivity for users of digital media, as technology becomes more accessible, provides a means of expression that fosters intuitive self-attention leading to moments of personal revelation. Computer-mediated discourse shapes individuals' understandings of texts and the potentials for authorship and experiences of narrative. Different expressions of ergodic ontogeny inform the realities of play experience and the learning processes that result from digital media interactivity.
