Language of Amor and Eros. Romantic interludes in Second Life

This study focuses on the social interaction and communicative practices in the digital multimodal and multimedial three dimensional world Second Life. In its early implementation, the world appealed to users attracted by the... [ view full abstract ]

This study focuses on the social interaction and communicative practices in the digital multimodal and multimedial three dimensional world Second Life. In its early implementation, the world appealed to users attracted by the mottos: “Your life. Your imagination”. “The only rule is that there are no rules”. The world offered the residents new possibilities to create autonomously and in collaboration with others, using digital tools both from inside and outside the world. This boundary breaking inclusive and participatory stand is persisting in the newer version of Second life. Nevertheless, SL-culture of today puts the social aspect to the foreground and the building of the virtual world is less obvious. Another new tendency is that users join the world from many more countries than in the beginning. The new diversity offers several possibilities for "languaging" practices and cultural encounters.

The study explores how the theme Amor and Eros is realized in Second Life through communication across real-world-boundaries, through visual features and interactions both corporal and verbal. The loose communities and their activities in the present SL-world are sustained by themes, among which Romance is one of them (Boellstorff 2008). Nine in-world regions, liked by more than 50 people on the Second Life official web site, are chosen to study how the residents or avatars engage with each other in order to realize the theme Amor and Eros (Luhmann 1998). The data material consists of immersed observations, as well as snapshots, copying of conversations, and films, retrieved during the immersed sessions. The material serves to identify practices and patterns in the realization of the theme. These data are informed by some in-depth interviews with avatars. The results contribute to the knowledge about how a theme engaging emotions, frequent across sites, both in popular and fine culture, such as classic literature (Belsey 1994), is reconstructed and revisited through social encounters and "languaging" among avatars. Finally, the study offers insight into how languages are used for a specific purpose in a virtual environment, and how "languaging" practices construct love on-line (Ben-Ze’ev 2004).