Book review: James Paul Gee, Unified Discourse Analysis: Language, Reality, Virtual Worlds and Video Games

Abstract

s slim volume opens with an introductory chapter that attempts to help the reader situate the work within the field of discourse analysis and video games studies. Gee's audience in this volume is, no doubt, undergraduate students and non-academics, given the language and references he uses. This makes the book very readable, but it does leave many new advances in the field of video games and discourse analysis out of the discussion. This was perhaps done deliberately, to keep the discussion and language simple, but as the book progresses it becomes more and more problematic.For example, Gee claims that his book is about 'something that has, as far as [he knows], never been written about before' (p. i). This in itself is a very troubling claim. It ignores, for example, the work of