HOMO LUDENS AS A PRODUCER AND A RECIPIENT OF BOARD GAMES: TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL PERSPECTIVE OF ANALYSIS

Abstract

Тhe paper focuses on one of the most popular types of modern recreational activities enjoyed by people – a game that arises through the use of various means of diff erent cultural codes which exist in a particular language and culture. The game as such is interpreted as both the process and the result of cooperative recreational activity of native speakers of language and members of culture performing in one of their guises, namely, the guise of Homo ludens. From a textotypological point of view, the game is described as a text that belongs to the class of directive or prescriptive texts. The generation of such texts requires the use of verbal and various non-verbal cultural codes which are typically used in texts that belong to the class of “instructions”. This gives reason to interpret the texts of the analyzed type as a creolized (polymodal, semiotically heterogeneous) text. The instructions for the board game are described as hybrid texts, since their content and their formal micro- and macrostructure are created with various techniques, in particular, techniques which are used in narrative, explicative and axiological texts, as well as artistic, journalistic, and in some cases scientifi c texts. These characteristics explain the multifunctionality of the texts of the analyzed type. The functions of the text, such as informative, socializing, axiological, etc., are clearly and indirectly subordinated to recreational and ludic functions. The latter, in turn, are implemented mainly and, typically, in the cooperative communication of native speakers within a particular culture. From the perspective of the content, the text of the “instructions for the board game” type non-linearly intertwines information from the real, fi ctional and virtual worlds. In the process of generating and perceiving the corresponding text, its producer(s) and recipients of the board game act as Homo ludens. This allows them to more or less seamlessly distinguish between fi ctional and real worlds in the process of playing the game, on the one hand, as well as fi ctional and one of the many potentially possible virtual worlds, on the other hand. The substantial and formal macrostructure of the text such as “instructions for a board game”, which has mandatory and optional macro components, reveals the consistent labeling of the latter through a system of headings and subheadings, as well as symbols or tools necessary for the game, voluntarily accepted by participants in the gameplay for a certain time period for a specifi c text space constructed during the game in a particular space-time continuum. Such way of textual organization makes it easier for the players to recognize the boundaries between the real, fi ctional and virtual worlds, and also helps to maintain the atmosphere of cooperative interaction.