First Person Shooters, Gadamer, and the Performative Function of Language
A bunch of friends one day decides to play a first person shooter game together: Chris, John, Stephanie and Paul. They find a map, and everyone joins the blue team.
After a few rounds of gameplay, Paul goes to the toilet. The other people on his team continue playing.
Out of nowhere, John starts to talk about how he views Paul as a horrific player, joking around way too much while not paying enough heed to actually trying to win the game at hand. He criticizes him as lazy, uninterested and incompetent.
Stephanie agrees with several uttered “true”-s along his entire bashing of Paul, feeling that John manages to perfectly capsulate her sentiment in words.
Chris, at first surprised when John starts backtalking Paul, remains confounded. He hadn’t thought about Paul as a lousy player at all, and he thought his jokes and foolishness were part of the fun of gameplay. Chris liked Paul the way he was. However, in order to not feel excluded and isolated from the two other friends, he casually chips in with an occasional “Yeah”.
When Paul returns from the bathroom, he begins noticing how his teammates’ behaviour has changed abruptly. When he starts joking around again, they don’t really laugh, as they had been before he left. He tries to connect with them, but fails. Silence; coughs; snorting their noses; yeahs and sures. The overall mood of the team is unpleasant, strictly gameplay-focused, with less banter than usual. Paul tries to go with the flow in playing, and quickly discovers his qualities are not on par with the others’, as evidenced by the straining quietude of the group. The atmosphere is tense and harshly austere. When the game ends, they don’t send messages with “gn” and “well played” to each other as usual; everyone cut off their playing sharply and immediately, except Paul.
A chill went down his spine. How come everyone were so cold tonight?
From that point on, Paul never joked during gaming sessions again. He got more tense as a result, since all of his focus was directed towards the one aim of playing well. If he failed, he would grow upset and frustrated. He was stressed out and at loggerheads about what to do. Paul’s online demeanour changed for the worse, as he never would regain the sort of calm and liveliness he once had. He became more uptight, reserved, serious and all-round regulated. Paul could never express his authentic self; he had problems with his self-image and always had to constantly monitor his actions and phrasing of words. He always feared he’d might say something stupid.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, a German 20th century philosopher, would’ve described Paul as suffering from what he had coined as the performative function of language. That is, whenever someone has talked about someone/something, it invariably moulds their stance towards said object, and hence their treatment of it. From having been subject to differing treatment, the object at hand changes how they act so as to avoid continued repercussions. The performative function of language changes perception, and thus behaviour.
Nothing needed to be said directly to Paul to change his online behaviour. The overall mood and online situation had changed, and he thought that it was due to his faults alone. In other settings, say in the real world, body and facial cues would’ve done the same trick, too.
The point is: language can shape perception and understanding, then modify behaviour, consciously or unconsciously. Gadamer’s idea shows how language, in reality, can change real-life situations by itself, so that John’s perception of Paul becomes, in practice, the new reality or “truth” in social settings.
Neither Stephanie nor Chris tried to step in and oppose his view of the world; rather, they submitted and conformed to it, so it just is the determined, agreed-upon reality. As it is, people conform to it, in order to not break ties with the crowd, with the various consequences associated with it. Language, in all of its applications, dictates reality, so it’s not “harmless” by any stretch of the imagination.
The performative function of language shows how construction plays a powerful role regarding all aspects of society. Very few things in human culture, if none, develop naturally. Truly, it shows how ideas and practices can get institutionalized, legitimized and hammered in so well that no other realities can exist beyond, in a sense. No other alternative perspectives seem to be valid; it must’ve be Paul’s fault; it can’t just be that John might be a bit of an unforgiving douchebag, who, instead of reacting in anger, could’ve perhaps encouraged Paul in a friendly, nice manner.
When pushed to its extremes, this idea might do more harm and good. Certainly, everything cannot be willy-nilly pointed at and called systemic suppression or whatnot. However, what I find truly awesome about some structuralist/postmodern philosophers, is how they get to the very heart of things, exposing the hidden internal logic of norms, processes etc. we remain ignorant of or disinterested in, which tears down all preconceptions of worldviews we might already have and believe to be real and truthful.
Away with all standards; find the essence.
