Spezzaferri Carlo 2004580 Tesi

Università degli Studi di Padova
Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari
Corso di Laurea Triennale Interclasse in

Lingue, Letterature e Mediazione culturale (LTLLM)
Classe LT-12
Tesina di Laurea
Soulslike video games —

a corpus linguistic analysis of the language
of Elden Ring
Relatrice Laureando
Prof. Sara Gesuato Carlo Spezzaferri
n° matr.2004580 / LTLLM
Anno Accademico 2022/2023

Ringrazio innanzitutto la Prof. Sara Gesuato, che mi ha guidato in questa avventura
con costanza, sapienza, gentilezza e comprensione.
Ringrazio i miei genitori, che hanno sempre supportato ogni mio progetto.
Ringrazio la mia fidanzata, per aver condiviso con me tutti i momenti di questo
percorso.
Ringrazio amiche e amici, per avermi sempre motivato e ispirato.
“The Elden Ring, oh Elden Ring, shattered by someone...or something. Don’t tell me
you don’t see it. Look up at the sky. It burns.”
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... 3
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 5
1.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................5
1.2. Soulslike games.................................................................................................5
1.3. What Elden Ring is............................................................................................8
1.3.1. White Mask Varré’s quest as an example of relationship with
an NPC in Elden Ring .........................................................................10
1.4. What makes Elden Ring stand out from other soulslikes................................13
1.5. The language of Elden Ring ............................................................................13
1.6. Conclusion ......................................................................................................14
CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUND AND METHOD ....................................................... 15
2.1. Introduction .....................................................................................................15
2.2. Background .....................................................................................................15
2.3. Method ............................................................................................................17
2.3.1. Data collection ....................................................................................17
2.3.2. The research questions........................................................................25
CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................ 27
3.1. Introduction .....................................................................................................27
3.2. The language of Elden Ring (RQ1).................................................................27
3.2.1. Frequent words and positive keywords in the Characters sub-Corpus
(RQ1a-b) .............................................................................................27
3.2.2. Frequent words in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ1c-d) ........................34
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3.2.3. Frequency of use of Elden Ring’s vocabulary (RQ1e) .......................36
3.2.4. General traits of the language of Elden Ring ......................................38
3.3. The language of Alexander, Melina, Ranni and Varré (RQ2a-b) ...................38
3.3.1. Alexander’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams .........................38
3.3.2. Melina’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams...............................42
3.3.3. Ranni’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams ................................46
3.3.4. Varré’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams .................................49
3.3.5. Implications ........................................................................................52
3.4. The language of object descriptions in Elden Ring (RQ3) .............................52
3.4.1. Keywords in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ3a) ....................................52
3.4.2. Phraseologies in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ3b) ..............................53
3.4.3. Considerations about the linguistic traits of the
Objects sub-Corpus ............................................................................55
3.5. General implications .......................................................................................55
CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................... 57
4.1. Introduction .....................................................................................................57
4.2. My goals and results .......................................................................................57
4.3. Pros and cons of the study...............................................................................58
4.4. Suggestions for future research .......................................................................60
BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................................... 62
WEBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 65
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ABSTRACT
Video games have been enjoying world-wide popularity among gamers and fans alike to
the point that academics from various fields, too, have started devoting their attention to
them. For example, literary scholars have studied how narration is developed in video
games, archaeologists have studied the “archaeological” techniques for looking for in-
game objects, and psychologists have focused on the impact that gaming skills have on
learners’ minds. However, ‘soulslike’ games have not received much academic attention.
Soulslike games are role-playing video games, usually set in medieval and fantasy
environments, in which the player has to “immerse” him-/herself in the game by crafting
materials, finding useful objects and assembling equipment for facing various dangers
during the game. This involves speaking to characters and looking for items, accompanied
by some verbal description, that may turn out to be useful.
Linguists, too, have shown interest in video games, investigating their slang and its
relevance to students’ everyday life, the usefulness of video games in learning and
practising languages, and the complexity of translating video games. However, a detailed
examination of their discourse is still lacking. In this dissertation I provide a linguistic
analysis of Elden Ring. Elden Ring is the first open world souslike game, that is one
characterised by a large and completely explorable game world. My analysis describes
the lexical make-up of the speech of the main characters in Elden Ring (Blaidd, Boc, the
Dung Eater, Fia, Gideon, Alexander, Melina, Millicent, Miriel, Nepheli, Ranni, Roderika,
Sellen, Tanith, and Varré) and the descriptions of the main objects related to them (e.g.
weapons, armours, spells). To this end, I used a corpus-driven approach, exploring the
recurrent phraseologies of each of the above, pointing out shared and unshared vocabulary
choices. By using the software AntConc, I identified the most frequent words, the
keywords and the word combinations of characters’ talk and of object descriptions. The
findings show that the speech of soulslike games’ characters, who embody stereotypical
roles, is characterised by distinctive lexico-grammatical patterns, which contribute to
shaping the personality of the characters. They also show that the texts about the game
objects have a descriptive and a narrative component which complement the mysterious
content of the characters’ discourse, crucially leading to a thorough understanding of the
characters in Elden Ring.
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4
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Introduction
This study aims to analyse the discourse (i.e. recurrent phraseologies) of some of the main
characters of the video game Elden Ring in order to shed light on aspects of their
personality and gain a better understanding of the game itself. In this chapter, I give a
brief introduction to the video game genre Elden Ring belongs to (Section 1.2.), including
an outline of the video game itself (1.3.) and a general description of its linguistic
characteristics (1.5.). In the end, I motivate my study and provide an overview of the next
chapters (Section 1.6.).
1.2. Soulslike games1
Elden Ring is the latest representative of the "soulslike" game sub-genre, which is part of
the role play game (RPG) genre.
RPGs are typically characterised by a realistic, although fictious, explorable game world,
in which the player is supposed to organise her/his fight against hostile creatures and
interact with the environment and its inhabitants in order to gain information which will
be useful not only to understand the game’s plot, but mainly to survive. The fight a gamer
engages in, thus, is based on the effective management of an inventory, that is a “virtual
bag” consultable as a menu, in which it is possible to find all the items collected and
crafted during the game (see Picture 1). At the beginning of the game, the player will
create her/his avatar, which will evolve as the story progresses, by developing new skills,
using new weapons and acquiring new powers, as the need arises. Therefore, the player
plays the roles of different characters (e.g. as a knight, a magician, an archer), depending
on the dangers and challenges she/he will have to face (see Picture 2). Assuming these
different roles is indeed the reason why these games are called RPGs.
1
The following information derives from my own gaming experience and knowledge of the video game
genres that I describe.
5
Picture 1: Inventory in The Witcher 3 (credit: retroneogames.com).
Picture 2: Examples of players’ characters in Elden Ring (edited, original image credit:
altchar.com).
As a sub-genre of RPG, soulslike games inherit the properties of RPGs. However, some
aspects make these games stand out from the genre they belong to.
Firstly, soulslike games are usually characterised by a dark fantasy setting. A classic
exemplar is Bloodborne, an iconic soulslike game created by FromSoftware, in
collaboration with Sony. It is set in an extremely dark and Lovecraftian early 19th-century
world, with contorted and terrifying beasts in every corner. Another representative is
Dark Souls, a video game trilogy published by FromSoftware and Bandai Namco between
2011 and 2016, which also gives its name to the video game genre. Dark Souls is set in a
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medieval dark world – as the name suggests – mainly coloured with a black, grey and
dark red colour palette, with decaying castles, ancient menacing dragons and knights who
have lost their mind, rotten by the same curse afflicting their whole land.
Another essential feature of soulslike games is immersion. This means that they are
developed with the idea of making players feel as if they themselves are living the
adventures that their avatars live under their control. In other words, the player does not
only move her/his character as a puppet, but she/he is actually part of the game’s world.
Souslike games are usually characterized by a linear type of exploration, in which the
player can explore wide areas, but only one at a time, and only moving from one to
another through a pre-established path. Elden Ring, however, does not present this
characteristic, as it identifies as an open world game (see Section 1.3.).
As happens in all RPGs, soulslike players usually meet Non-Playable Characters (NPCs).
These are characters interacting with the players’ own characters: they give suggestions
to the players, make them take choices, make requests of them, and, when these are
fulfilled, they offer players rewards (e.g. items usable in the game or in-game currency
for buying items). In the video game world, relationships of this kind with NPCs are
called quests. The items obtainable by exploration, quests or defeating enemies are called
droppable items or simply drops. Besides “standard” NPCs, players can also come in
contact with other online players as if these were NPCs. That is, a player in a soulslike
game can make another player’s avatar appear in the game world and make them act as a
friend —who can help you defeat enemies or explore the setting of the game – or
alternatively as an enemy to fight against, eventually obtaining rewards for defeating
them. It is also possible to invade other players’ worlds as an enemy-aggressor. In the
video game world, this gives rise to battles between players online, which are named
Player Versus Player (PVP) battles.
Narration in soulslike games stands in stark contrast to other video game genres – in every
soulslike world, no-one informs the gamer of what is going on. In other words, there is
no narrator, let alone a guide or instructions. The narration consists in environmental
storytelling. That is, a player gradually comes to know a complex and intricate story
through the gaming experience itself – the characters they meet during their exploration,
the objects they are given, the objects they can find on the map, won by defeating enemies
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or bought with the game’s currency. In this extremely inclusive and immersive narration,
the information players gather depends on the choices they make and the consequences
these choices bring about. This means that different players – or the same player on
different occasions – are exposed to multiple points of view of the “same” game.
In order to thoroughly complete soulslike games – that is, not only to succeed in achieving
the final goal, such as defeating the main enemy, but also to fully understand the whys
and wherefores of the games – it is crucial to use web guides, administrated by IT experts,
video games technicians and gaming experts. These web resources provide transcriptions
of the games’ dialogues. This is useful for two reasons. One is that players can make up
for the parts of dialogues they may have missed while playing in the games, a loss which
would otherwise have very unpleasant consequences for the gamer. The other reason is
that it is possible to search for the name of a specific character of a given game and obtain
all the information existing about this character, including all the descriptions of the
objects related to her/him.
In sum, both spoken language (i.e. the dialogues with NPCs) and written language (i.e.
descriptions of the droppable items) play a crucial role in soulslike games, as they provide
the player with information. necessary to understand the plot and to survive and become
more powerful in the game world.
1.3. What Elden Ring is2
Elden Ring is a fantasy video game belonging to the RPG genre, published by
FromSoftware and Bandai Namco in 2022. It was recently awarded the prestigious Game
of the Year prize – the most important annual prize for a video game – attesting to its very
high value. Its authors, who developed its setting and plot, are Hidetaka Miyazaki
(visionary author of trendsetting video games such as Dark Souls and the award-winning
Bloodborne) and George R. R. Martin (a contemporary icon for medieval fantasy
literature, author of the Game of Thrones saga).
2
The following information come both from Elden Ring’s official website and my personal gaming
experience.
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Surrounded by a crepuscular medieval environment, it is set in the Lands Between, a
fictional world ruled over by Demigods. As players gradually come to understand as a
result of exploring this unfamiliar world, a long time before the events taking place in the
game, the Demigods’ mother, the immortal queen Marika, used to rule upon these lands
thanks to the Elden Ring, a magic item giving enormous powers to its possessor. But then,
suddenly, Marika shattered the artifact and disappeared, leaving the Lands Between
without anyone to rule it. At that point, her sons and daughters started a crazy hunt for
the Elden Ring’s shards – called Great Runes in the game’s world – in order to ascend
the throne that belonged to their mother, thus fighting with each other. However, not being
effective as gods, when they found and took possession of the shards, they were corrupted
by their strength. This became too heavy a “burden” for them to carry, and they turned
into blind beasts thirsty for glory and dominion.
Therefore, when a player enters this fantasy world, their role is to cross the Lands
Between to find and kill all the crazy possessors of the Great Runes, collect the powerful
shards to reforge the Elden Ring and become its ‘Elden Lord’, restoring the original order
in the end. The game thus requires players to be practically living in the game’s world –
exploring its map – and using the character they create as their avatar. Taking decisions
about the way to interact with the characters living in the game’s world and creating a
well-constructed ‘build’ (the armour, weapons and spells that a gamer decides to use) are
the basis of the gaming experience.
When I played my first run in Elden Ring, that is, when I first completed the game,
everything sounded and looked mysterious: a blue-skinned witch talking about unknown
entities in a kind of poetic language, a vase with arms and legs telling about its valour in
war as a soldier, and old women speaking solemnly, giving voice to some divine entity
are only a few examples of the encounters that a gamer experiences in Elden Ring. In
addition, a huge number of descriptions are provided of various items in this game,
contributing both to the novice player’s sense of loss and to the veteran’s understanding
of the game. By paying attention to dialogues and descriptions, players can gradually
come to know about the background events of the Lands Between.
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1.3.1. White Mask Varré’s quest as an example of relationship with an NPC in Elden
Ring
I will now provide a practical example of part of a quest in Elden Ring (the transcription
of the dialogues in the same quest is found in Section 2.3.1.), illustrating how interaction
with NPCs takes place in this game, which applies also to soulslike games in general.
In Elden Ring, the gamer’s character can communicate with the NPCs, but unlike them,
she/he cannot produce any sound. NPCs speak to the player’s character and the player
can answer (in case of questions) or, in general, contribute to the conversation by selecting
one of the few options (e.g. a sentence, a word or silence) available from a drop-down
menu, which shows up every time the player’s character needs to “speak”. Obviously, the
selection made by the player affects the development of the quest in which the
conversation takes place. There are plenty of possible developments for the same quest,
depending on the degree of agreement between the gamer’s character and the NPCs.
Interestingly, it is possible to set the subtitles to see the transcription of what NPCs and
other characters say every time they speak (see Picture 3). This does not apply to the
player’s character, at least as long as her/his contribution to the conversation is limited to
a choice from a menu (see Picture 4).
Picture 3: Varré speaking to the player (edited, original image credit:

interfaceingame.com).
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Picture 4: Example of answer choices during a conversation with
an NPC in Elden Ring (original image credit:
gamersheroes.com).
The quest I am going to present, White Mask Varre’s quest, is one of the main quests in
Elden Ring, meaning that the decisions taken by the player and her/his interactions with
the NPCs he/she becomes involved in in this quest are crucial to the development of the
game’s plot. Also, because of Varré’s extremely mysterious and subtle behaviour, I
consider it to be the most intriguing one in the whole game.
When the gamer begins playing Elden Ring, her/his character wakes up in a sepulchre
situated in Limgrave (see Picture 5). Here, right outside the sepulchre, when she/he first
sees the sunlight, the gamer meets Varré, who seems to be waiting for her/his arrival.
Picture 5: Limgrave (credit: eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com).
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The player can interact with Varré simply by pressing the button indicated next to “Talk”
(see Picture 6). Once the player has done this, Varré will talk to the player and tell her/him
she/he is a “Tarnished” (i.e. a non-dead person, who has come back from death) without
a guide and needs to head towards some “Castle Stormveil”, “home of the decrepit
demigod, Godrick the Grafted” to find the way. His words are cryptic and sound
confusing, but they are the only guidance that the player has at the beginning of the game
(see Picture 7).
White Mask Varré

The player
Picture 6: First meeting with Varré in Limgrave (edited,

original image credit: holdtoreset.com).
Picture 7: Path suggested by Varré (edited, original image credit:

eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com).
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Once the player has explored the entire Limgrave, has arrived at the castle and has
defeated Godrick, she/he can head back to where Varré is, and Varré now appears to want
to test the player, and to ascertain her/his intentions. Here, if the player presents
her/himself as virtuous and sinless, Varré will refuse to say anything else. On the other
hand, if the player assumes an attitude similar to Varré’s, in other words if the player
starts to agree when Varré asks for feedback on his statements and proves to be as cynic
as him when answering his questions, Varré will continue talking, and reveal where to go
next. Eventually, if the player follows Varré’s advice, he/she will meet him again at the
new location so that the quest may proceed.
1.4. What makes Elden Ring stand out from other soulslikes
Three aspects make Elden Ring stand out from other soulslike games. The most important
is that Elden Ring is an open world game, that is, it has a very extended area, called map,
which is completely freely explorable by the player, who orients her/himself by
consulting an actual geographic map, usually accessible from the game’s menu. The other
innovative aspect is the possibility for the player to evoke allied spirits (ghosts) who can
help defeat enemies, by using a special item present in the inventory (see Section 1.2).
Lastly, a player can evoke “offline” spirits just by using an item, whenever and wherever
he/she wants, rather than only in specific places, as is the case in other soulslike games.
For the above reasons, Elden Ring could be defined as a trend-setting game, as it is an
open world soulslike game with a wide use of evocations.
1.5. The language of Elden Ring
An interesting aspect of Elden Ring is its language. It partly sounds old-fashioned –

reminding players of earlier stages of English – and it is partly idiosyncratic, that is,
character-specific.
All the verbal input that is audible in Elden Ring – apart from environmental and animal
sounds – is in English. It is possible to set the game’s interface in 14 different languages,
but it is not possible to change the audio of the dialogues, even in the original Japanese
version. This is a specific choice made by the author Miyazaki, who believed that this
was the best option to create a western fantasy atmosphere in the video game. Given that
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the goal of the game was to contribute to the creation of a late medieval fantasy
environment, the English used necessarily had to “sound old”.
Each character’s linguistic peculiarities are motivated by their background, personal

history and personality; for example, the characters with a higher social status (such as
the Empyreans), tend to speak in a formal way, while those belonging to lower classes
(like soldiers or merchants) use a more colloquial register (see Section 3.3.).
By paying attention to how a character speaks (e.g. the degree of formality of his/her
register, the concepts she/he expresses, how she/he addresses the player, how explicit or
cryptic he/she is, what interjections he/she uses, when and how often she/he pauses), a
player can predict the development of the quests he/she engages with when dealing with
that character as well as the role that the character plays in the overall plot.
1.6. Conclusion
Academic researchers in various fields have examined the phenomenon of video games.
Psychologists have analysed the impact of video games on players’ minds and the
learning approach that they foster; queer studies scholars have studied the representation
of gender in games; and literary scholars have considered video games’ narrative
techniques. In addition, archaeologists have examined the archaeology techniques used
in video games. Finally, linguists have focused their attention on the terminology of
games, and some articles have also been published about Elden Ring. What has been left
largely unexplored is the complexity of the discourse of Elden Ring’s different characters,
and the descriptions of the items in the game, both of which move the narration forward.
In Chapter 2, indeed, I first overview the literature relevant to video games. Next, I specify
the aims of my study and report on how I collected the data for my analysis. After that, I
outline and exemplify the actual process of analysis which I carried out. Finally, I present
and comment on my fidings, and draw some conclusions from them.
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CHAPTER 2
BACKGROUND AND METHOD
2.1. Introduction
This chapter aims to contextualise and present my examination of Elden Ring characters’
personality traits and experiences on the basis of the language attributed to or somehow
related to them. I first give an overview of relevant literature (Section 2.2.). Then I
illustrate how I collected and analysed the data, and finally I present the research
questions addressed, together with their operationalization (Section 2.3.).
2.2. Background
To set the context for my project, I first checked whether studies had already been
published on Elden Ring. I started out by carrying out searches on Google, using Elden,
Ring, and Elden Ring as my search words. The results of these searches were mostly
reviews by famous video games magazines (like Everyeye or IGN), Reddit posts by
players who discuss with other players various aspects of the game, links to YouTube
videos, guides on how to complete the game (Everyeye.it; Multiplayer.com 3; Bandai
Namco).
Next, I consulted GalileoDiscovery, the online library catalogue of the University of

Padova. Here I typed in Elden and Ring in the Title field, selecting as databases those
called Tutto and EBSCO. These new searches returned lists of publications dealing with
various aspects of the game. For example, one of these is the “archaeology” of the game.
Nicholls and Cook (2022) analyse Elden Ring by comparing how information is collected
in archaeological sites and how information is collected about the game’s plot by a player
who looks for clues all over the map of the game. Other publications provide
psychological analyses of consumers’ decisions in purchasing video games or how they
may organise their busy weekly schedule in order to have time to play video games
(Riyanto et al., 2022; MacDonald, 2022).
3
Everyeye.it and Multiplayer.com, along with websites as IGN.com, are among the most famous and
trustable online magazines about video games, since they always have early access to the games and the
news about them, and they report exclusive interviews with real game developers and directors.
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Later I conducted searches also on such websites and platforms such as Google Scholar,
ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and – at the suggestion of librarians at my university – also
Worldcat and KVK (Karlsruhe Virtual Catalog), but I did not find any scientific
publication about Elden Ring.
At this point, I decided to expand my search, looking for possible publications on video
games in general, in the same sources I mentioned above, using as my search words
“Video game”, “Language”, “Video game” and “Language”. This returned a high number
of references to publications dealing with the various aspects of the world of video games,
namely: narration in video games (e.g. Suter, 2021; Attademo, 2022); the psychological
benefits that video games can offer (e.g. Cejudo et al., 2019; Declos, 2021); the highly
engaging learning processes made possible by playing video games (e.g. Thomas, 2011;
Prensky, 2001); and especially the connection between video games and language, such
as the communicative processes taking place in video games and their peculiar language
(e.g. Ensslin, Balteiro, 2019; Iaia, 2016), and the translation of the language in video
games (e.g. Bernal-Merino, 2015; O’Hagan, Mangiron, 2013).
Some of these publications present analyses based on people effectively playing a video
game. For example, Costuchen et al. (2022) report on an investigation about the
relationship between language learning at various ages and space exploration in a video
game specifically created for this purpose. Similar analyses are reported, for instance, in
Hitosugi et al. (2014) and Muñoz González et al. (2021).
Other articles analyse the issue of education and language learning through video games
from a more academic point of view (Koutsogiannis, Adampa, 2022; Soyoof, Jokar, 2014;
Casañ Pitarch, 2017). Fewer are the articles dealing with linguistic aspects of video games
apart from language learning issues, translation or education. For example, Heritage
(2021) analyses the linguistic representation of gender in the famous The Witcher saga;
Touiserkani (2015) deals with the adaptation techniques of audio-visual products to other
languages; Halaczkiewicz (2020) analyses the influence that informal language in video
games can have on gamers’ academic writing in an education context.
However, one aspect of video games in general, and of Elden Ring in particular, that has
remained underexplored is the discourse of video game characters and what this may
reveal about their personality, attitude and behaviour. This is where I aim to give my
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contribution. My impression of the language of Elden Ring (i.e. the speech of characters
and descriptions of objects) is that it sounds archaic in general, and also that it varies
considerable across characters. My goal in this thesis is to verify to what extent this may
be true.
2.3. Method
In this section, I report on how I collected and analysed the data. First, I detail and
illustrate the steps taken to gather data. Next, I outline how I operationalised my research
questions.
2.3.1. Data collection
Collecting data about a videogame is very easy nowadays thanks to the online
contributions of game communities. The soulslike games’ community4 is no exception.
The data I used for analysis comes from two sources. One is Elden Ring Wiki, a website
entirely devoted to Elden Ring. This includes information for gamers such as dialogues,
characters’ biographical information, bossfights5 tutorials or descriptions of objects and
their location on the game’s virtual map and the best way to use them. The data that I
collected on the Elden Ring Wiki comprises the speech of the characters that are
frequently present in Elden Ring, and descriptions of objects relevant to them (see below).
My other source of data is the first volume of the Elden Ring’s Books of Knowledge
(2022), which contains accurate information about the game’s gameplay mechanics,
world (maps and descriptions of the Lands Between’s territory), quests and plot and
which I used to select the object descriptions included in my analysis (see below).
To collect the words told by a given character, I searched for her/his dedicated page on
the Elden Ring Wiki, by typing her/his name in the search bar (see Picture 8), scrolled
down to the dialogues section and copied the content of the section (except for the context
4
Soulslike games’ community corresponds to soulslike games’ fanbase, in the video games’ slang. It is the
group of fans supporting these games and also supporting each other, by exchanging useful information in
the forums or through social media.
5
A bossfight is a fight against a boss, that is, a particularly powerful enemy in a video game, usually the
most powerful in a given area of the game, who a gamer is supposed to face after completing the exploration
of that area and defeating all the other enemies.
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explanation lines added to it; see Picture 9), pasting it onto a Word file (named after the
character’s name), which I saved to my Elden Ring Characters folder. This way, I created
as many Word files as the characters whose speech I had decided to examine, each file
containing the complete speech of a single character.
Picture 8: Partial screenshot of some of the text material

retrieved by entering “ranni” on Elden Ring Wiki, and
the page of the website devoted to the character ‘Ranni
the Witch’.
Picture 9: Exemplification of a character’s speech as

reported in the Wiki.
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To give an idea of what “characters’ dialogues look like, I report two examples. Example
1 shows the lines attributed to Iron Fist Alexander, a “warrior jar”.
Example (1), about Iron Fist Alexander:
Hello-o? Can you hear me?

Help me! I’m stuck.
Hello? Hellooo! Anyone!
Oh my stars I’m so happy to see you!
I am Alexander, also known as the Iron Fist. And as you can see, I’m stuck here.
Please, can you help me out of this?
My thanks! A thousand thanks! Just give me a good smack from the rear, with something nice
and big.
When players first meet Alexander, he is stuck in a hole in the ground (see Picture 10),
and will continue putting himself in dangerous situations, asking the gamer to help him
throughout the game. He looks funny (he is a big jar with arms and legs), but has a friendly
(see, e.g. “Oh my stars I’m so happy to see you!”) and kind (see, e.g. “My thanks! A
thousand thanks!”) attitude towards the player.
Picture 10: First meeting with Iron Fist Alexander (credit:

gamesource.it).
Example 2 illustrates the speech of Gideon Ofnir, the leader of the “Roundtable Hold”,
the place which players are supposed to reach at the beginning of Elden Ring to look for
allies.
19
Example (2), about Gideon Ofnir:
Oh, this is a rare occasion. I can’t remember the last time a new Tarnished made their way to
the Roundtable.
Very well. As your senior, I bid you welcome. It is safe here. You may let down your guard.
Allow me a word of advice, as your senior. You are a mere visitor to the Roundtable, nothing
more. A house guest, yet to earn their keep. Remember your place, newcomer.
There’s nothing left to say. Be at your leisure.
"What do you need? I have little time to spare".
Gideon is a merciless and greedy seeker of knowledge, which he thinks could give him a
lot of power, who goes by the name of “the All-Knowing” (see Picture 11).
Picture 11: Gideon Ofnir while busy studying, an activity which he

carries out throughout the game (credit: top-mmo.fr).
To collect the texts of the object descriptions, I proceeded in a similar fashion. I used my
experience and knowledge of the game along with the list of objects included in Elden
Ring’s Books of Knowledge vol. 1 to identify the objects most relevant to the plot. Then,
I searched for the pages dedicated to them on the website by writing the object names in
the search bar. Therefore, for each object, I copied the description offered on its specific
page (see Picture 12). Then I pasted all the object descriptions relevant to a particular
character onto a Word file, which I called *Character’s Name* – OBJECTS, saving all
these Word files in a folder which I called Elden Ring – OBJECTS.
20
The object’s description
Picture 12: Screenshot from the Elden Ring Wiki page dedicated to Ranni’s Dark Moon (a droppable
sorcery in Elden Ring associated to Ranni the Witch).
Below I give two examples of object descriptions. The first one (see Picture 13 and 14,
and Example 3) refers to the Spectral Steed Whistle. This object is for making Torrent, a
horned horse, appear. The second example (see Picture 15 and Example 4) reports a
description of a weapon called the Fingerslayer Blade 6.
These two examples show how object descriptions contain useful –although not rich or
detailed – information about what objects are for, how they can be used, and what the
consequences may be for using them in given ways.
Picture 13: The Spectral Steed Whistle (edited,

original image credit: shacknews.com).
6
In Elden Ring, the Fingerslayer Blade was allegedly used to kill a demigod of the Golden Order, the
decaying royal family in Elden Ring (see Section 1.3.).
21
Picture 14: The player mounting Torrent (credit: it.jugomobile.com).
Example (3)
A delicate goldwork ring. Can be used as a finger whistle.

Sound the whistle to summon and ride Torrent, the spectral steed.
(Dismounts steed when used while on horseback.)
Upon his death, the spectral steed can be summoned again, but doing so drains the
Flask of Crimson Tears.
Picture 15: The Fingerslayer Blade (credit: eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com).
Example (4)
The hidden treasure of the Eternal City of Nokron; a blade said to have been born of a
corpse.
This blood-drenched fetish is proof of the high treason committed by the Eternal City
and symbolizes its downfall.
Cannot be wielded by those without a fate, but is said to be able to harm the Greater
Will and its vassals.
22
For my analysis, I considered the texts relevant to 15 Elden Ring characters and 76 objects
which are particularly relevant to them in the game.
Table 1 lists the characters’ names, and specifies the length (in number of words) of their
speech and of the descriptions of objects relevant to them.
Characters Characters’ speech: Object descriptions:

No. of tokens No. of tokens
Blaidd the Half-Wolf 934 140
Boc the Seamster 1,039 51
Dung Eater 502 276
Fia 1,023 331
Gideon Ofnir 2,076 278
Iron Fist Alexander 1,710 122
Melina 1,672 100
Millicent 899 307
Miriel, Pastor of Vows 732 49
Nepheli Loux 720 106
Ranni the Witch 1,792 237
Roderika 1,354 140
Sorceress Sellen 1,262 680
Tanith 947 734
White Mask Varré 1,192 214
TOTAL 17,854 3,765
Table 1: Number of tokens making up the speeches of 15 Elden Ring characters and the
descriptions of their objects. (Note: the token count was obtained with AntConc.)
I chose these characters as they are particularly salient in the plot. Indeed, they often
interact with the player, giving him/her information he/she needs to move on in the game.
For example, Alexander supports the player throughout game and also fights by her/his
side. Melina guides the player, indicating her/him the path to follow. Miriel hints at what
a player can expect from the game’s ending. Since the characters have a typically hermetic
way of speaking, the size of the dataset of their speech, in number of words, is small.
Identical descriptions of given objects recur repeatedly in the game, since a player can
encounter different parts or versions of a given object multiple times while moving in the
world of Elden Ring. Therefore, I decided to include in my object description dataset only
a single description per object. The objects which I took under consideration for each
character are listed in Table 2.
23
Characters No. of objects Objects
Blaidd the Half- 2 Blaidd’s Set, Royal Greatsword
Wolf
Boc the Seamster 2 Sewing Needle, Gold Sewing Needle
Dung Eater Omen Set, Sword of Milos, Sewer-Gaol Key, Seedbed Curse,
6
Seluvis’s Potion, Mending Rune of the Fell Curse
Fia Knifeprint Clue, Weathered Dagger, Cursemark of Death,
7 Mending Rune of the Death Prince, Fia’s Set, Baldachin’s
Blessing, Radiant Baldachin’s Blessing
Gideon Ofnir Black Flame’s Protection, Lord’s Divine Fortification, Law
5 of Causality, Scepter of the All-Knowing, All-Knowing
Armor Set
Iron Fist Jar, Warrior Jar Shard, Shard of Alexander, Alexander’s
4
Alexander Innards
Melina 2 Spectral Steed Whistle, Rold Medallion
Millicent Unalloyed Gold Needle, Prosthesis-Wearer Heirloom,
Valkyrie’s Prosthesis, Rotten Winged Sword Insignia,
6
Millicent’s Prosthesis, Sombre Ancient Dragon Smithing
Stone
Miriel, Pastor of Celestial Dew
1
Vows
Nepheli Loux 3 Arsenal Charm, Stormhawk Axe, The Stormhawk King
Ranni the Witch Fingerslayer Blade, Miniature Ranni, Discarded Palace Key,
5
Dark Moon Ring, Dark Moon Greatsword
Roderika 3 Spirit Jellyfish Ashes, Crysalids’ Memento, Crimson Hood
Sorceress Sellen Comet Azur, Sellian Sealbreaker, Sellen’s Primal Glinstone,
Stars of Ruin, Eccentric’s Set, Shard Spiral, Glinstone Kris,
11
Witch’s Glintstone Crown, Sellen’s Bell Bearing, Azur’s
Glintstone Set, Lusat’s Glintstone Set
Tanith Volcano Manor Invitation, Drawing-Root Key, Magma Shot,
Scaled Armor Set, Serpentbone Blade, Crepus’s Vial, Taker’s
Cameo, Hoslow’s Petal Whip, Hoslow’s Armor Set, Tonic of
15
Forgetfulness, Dancer’s Castanets, Consort’s Attire Set,
Aspects of the Crucible: Breath, Letter from Volcano Manor,
Red Letter
White Mask Great Stars, Lord of Blood's Favor, Pureblood Knight's
4
Varré Medal, Varre's Bouquet
Table 2: Objects whose descriptions were analysed, next to the characters which they are relevant to.
The characters’ speech and object descriptions that I collected form a corpus (Bowker,
Pearson 2002: 24), that is, they are collections of authentic texts (i.e. not elicited, not
produced for research purposes), stored in electronic form (i.e. digital files) according to
specific criteria (i.e. they are meant to be representative of different characters and their
equipment), and which are then examined for their linguistic properties. From now on, as
I consider them the components of a macro-corpus, the Elden Ring Corpus (21,619), and
I will refer to them as the Characters sub-Corpus (17,854 words) and the Objects sub-
Corpus (3,765 words).
24
2.3.2. The research questions
To investigate the language of Elden Ring, I addressed the following research questions
(RQs):
 RQ1: Can the language of Elden Ring be accurately described as archaic-

sounding?
 RQ2: Can distinctive lexical traits be identified in the speech of different
characters in Elden Ring?
 RQ3: Does the language of the object descriptions markedly differ from that of
object descriptions?
In order to find answers to my research questions, I operationalised them as follows:
RQ1a: What are the 200 most frequent words in the Characters sub-Corpus and what are
its top 200 positive keywords7 extracted by comparing to spoken corpora of general
English? That is, what words are typical of this sub-corpus?
RQ1b: What topics or themes do they appear to be relevant to? That is, do they mention
or describe elements and phenomena that could be related to a “distant” world?
RQ1c: What are the 100 most frequent words in the Objects sub-Corpus? That is, what
words are typical of this sub-corpus?
RQ1d: What topics or themes do they appear to be relevant to? That is, do they mention
or describe elements and phenomena that could be related to a “distant” world?
RQ1e: How frequently are these words used nowadays according to the online Oxford
English Dictionary (OED)? That is, are they common in Modern English?
RQ2a: What are the 200 most frequent words and the top 200 positive keywords of the
speech of four main characters in Elden Ring (Alexander, Melina, Ranni, Varré8),
7
Positive vs negative keywords are, respectively, words that are unusually frequent vs infrequent compared
to a reference corpus.
8
The motivation behind the choice of these characters is twofold. First, they are my favourite NPCs, due
to their personality, background and appearance. These features make them iconic characaters of this game.
Second, my impression is that their way of expressing themselves is different from that the other inhabitants
of the Lands Between.
25
extracted by comparing the speech of each of these characters against the rest of the
Characters sub-Corpus? That is, what is lexically distinctive about the speech of each of
these characters?
RQ2b: What are recurrent n-grams in the speech of four main characters in Elden Ring
(Alexander, Melina, Ranni, Varré) compared against the speech of all other characters?
That is, what are their favourite expressions, if any?
RQ3: Does the language of object descriptions markedly differ from that of the
characters?
RQ3a: What are the positive keywords that characterise the Objects sub-Corpus
compared to the Characters sub-Corpus?
RQ3b: What distinctive phraseologies, if any, are peculiar to this sub-corpus, that is, what
do recurrent n-grams reveal about the lexico-grammatical preferences of this sub-corpus,
if anything?
In the next chapter, I present the results of my analysis.
26
CHAPTER 3
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
3.1. Introduction
In this Chapter, I present the results of my analysis of the language of Elden Ring,
addressing my RQs (see Section 2.3.2.). First, I address the first RQ (see Section 3.2.),
then I address the second one (see Section 3.3.) and the third one (see Section 3.4.).
Finally, I comment on the whole analysis and the results obtained (see Section 3.5.).
3.2. The language of Elden Ring (RQ1)
Here I present the results of the analysis relevant to RQ1, by examining the most frequent
words and the positive keywords in the Characters sub-Corpus (see Section 3.2.1) and
the most frequent words in the Objects sub-Corpus (see Section 3.2.2.), then tracing their
frequency of use of in contemporary English and over time (see Section 3.2.3.).
3.2.1. Frequent words and positive keywords in the Characters sub-Corpus (RQ1a-
b)
To outline a lexical profile of the characters’ sub-corpus, I examined the list of its 200
most frequent words, reported in Table 3 (RQ1a). The content words in this list are mostly
common everyday English words. However, there are some exceptions, such as
characters’ names (Marika, Ranni, Radahn, Torrent) and two unattested forms: Erdtree,
which is the tree around which all the Lands Between dwell, and Glintstone, an important
shiny mineral (as its name suggests) related to sorceries in Elden Ring. Interestingly, erd-
is an old prefix, dating back to the Old English9 period, which indicates “the land where
one dwells” or “the world on which the humankind lives” (OED) (RQ1b).
I also identified some content words which do not sound particularly common in
contemporary English (lord, roundtable, tarnished, master, apprentice, guidance,
warrior, rot, champion). Therefore, I searched for information about their semantic and
9
Old English is the English language attested from around the fifth century CE to about 1100.
27
historical collocation (RQ1b), finding that these words mostly belong to past historical
contexts and grammatical uses.
In particular:
 Lord was an address term reserved to members of ta high social class, which was
in use especially between 1450 and 1730 (OED) and is instead used much more
rarely today; in Elden Ring it mainly refers to the Elden Lord, that is the warrior
conquering the Lands Between by accessing the Elden Ring (see Section 1.3.),
although it is also used to indicate other socially or hierarchically relevant figures
(e.g. Lord of Blood, Lord of Stormveil).
 Roundtable, although still in common use (e.g. roundtable discussion), was
particularly common between around 1325 and 1543 (especially in reference to
King Arthur’s story) (OED); in Elden Ring, it refers to the Roundtable Hold, a
meeting place for all the defenders of the Golden Order, in a way similar to the
Arthurian cycle.
 Tarnished is a term originated in early 1700s (OED), indicating someone or
something “having lost purity or lustre”; in Elden Ring, it is used to describe the
people who were once guided by Queen Marika in their path to conquer the Lands
Between throne (the Guidance of Grace) and were then deprived of this guide,
thus becoming blemished.
 Master was used to signal somebody’s artistic or crafting ability between 1607
and 1766 (OED), and by extension their social superiority. While nowadays
master typically indicates (the holder of) a university degree, in Elden Ring it
mostly indicates expert smiths (e.g. Master Hewg) or powerful wizards (e.g.
Master Lusat).
 Apprentice is a term originated in Middle English to indicate “a learner of a craft”
(OED), and in Elden Ring it is used by Sorceress Sellen to address the player,
when providing him/her with knowledge about the world of sorcery.
 Guidance, “the action of guiding” (OED), started being used in the mid-16th
century; it is still a term in common use; in Elden Ring it is used to refer to the
Guidance of Grace (see Tarnished above).
28
 Warrior is a word from Middle English (OED). Its use is nowadays limited to
historical contexts and literature, as in Elden Ring.
 Rot, intended as decadence, corruption, from which rotten derives, originated in
Middle English (OED); in Elden Ring it indicates the Scarlet Rot, the plague
devouring a big part of the game map, hitting every kind of living organism,
causing mental illness and physical decadence (see Picture 16).
Picture 16: The landscape of Caelid, the “rotten zone” of the game (credit: top-mmo.fr).
 Champion comes Middle English, too (OED), indicating “a person who holds the
first place in prize-fighting, rowing, walking, or other trial of strength or skill”; in
Elden Ring, it refers to war and fighting in particular. Today, however, this word
is mostly used in sports to denote the winner in a competition.
The word frequency list also includes a few function words that sound archaic. These are
the pronominal and adjectival forms of the 2nd-person singular pronoun: thou (subject
form, e.g. Thou’rt a fitting choice10 or What hopest thou to profit?), thee (object form,
e.g. Mother’s rich slumber shall not be disturbed by thee, I have called for Blaidd to greet
thee below) and thy (possessive adjective, e.g. Then, after thy death […] or I divest each
of thee of thy grace). Dating back to the Old English period, they were still used in Middle
10
All the examples reported in these two paragraphs are taken from Ranni the Witch or Melina’s discourses
(see Section 3.3.3).
29
English11, and have survived in Modern English12 only in some official formulae (e.g. I
take thee to my wedded husband, With this ring I thee wed).
Although not listed in the top 200 most frequent words in this sub-corpus, the possessive
pronoun thine is also attested (e.g. The choice is thine, or, mostly, possessive adjective,
e.g. With thine eyes dimmed […]). Interestingly, in the Characters sub-Corpus once can
also find archaic forms of the 2nd-person singular present tense ending in –(e )st (e.g. The
name of the spectral steed thou callest?, To do with as thou wishest) or (a)rt (e.g. Thou’rt
possessed of the power, no?, Thou’rt a rare sort), once used also for the plural (a.g.
Blaidd, and Iji both... Art willing to give too much to me), and of the 3rd-person singular
present tense in –(e)th (e.g. Now cometh the age of the stars or As the path stretcheth into
darkness). In total there are 10 instances of –(a)rt, 12 of –(e)st and 5 of –(e)th.
In order to retrieve the first 200 positive keywords in the Characters sub-Corpus, I
compared it against four General Modern English corpora of spoken discourse (Text, TV
Text, Soap Text, Movies Text; 7,686,734 total tokens), available on Corpusdata
(https://www.corpusdata.org/), which I combined together into one macro corpus. The
keywords identified (see Table 4) are similar to the most frequent words (see Table 3).
Indeed, they are relevant to a medieval world of knights and aristocrats (e.g. lord,
roundtable, manor, queen, dynasty), and the characters and “plot” of the game (e.g.
golden, guidance, grace, warrior, master, shackles); they also include neologisms (e.g.
Erdtree, glintstone), proper names (e.g. Ranni, Radahn, Azur) and old function words and
morphemes (e.g. thou, thee, hopest, wouldst). Overall, 64 of the words appearing in
keyword list also appear in the frequency word list.
11
Middle English is the English language spoken from about 1100 to about 1450.
12
Modern English is the English language used since about 1450.
30
Word Frequency Word Frequency Word Frequency Word Frequency
the 966 from 52 when 28 allow 18
i 753 by 50 ask 26 back 18
you 605 who 50 even 26 did 18
to 534 on 48 long 26 heard 18
of 457 just 47 re 26 life 18
a 370 at 46 such 26 little 18
and 253 her 45 thank 26 other 18
my 251 please 45 their 26 than 18
it 242 elden 43 too 26 thing 18
is 209 again 41 two 26 warrior 18
me 196 then 41 d 25 about 17
in 172 time 40 how 25 dear 17
s 170 us 40 path 25 end 17
that 170 them 38 an 24 enough 17
for 150 roundtable 37 been 24 glintstone 17
your 140 great 36 she 24 much 17
be 139 his 36 apprentice 23 radahn 17
but 136 know 36 may 23 rot 17
this 134 like 36 myself 23 true 17
have 122 tarnished 36 need 23 after 16
with 112 ah 35 right 23 another 16
as 110 more 35 shall 23 any 16
lord 105 think 35 way 23 being 16
are 102 erdtree 34 which 23 done 16
t 91 our 34 death 22 first 16
will 90 could 33 find 22 flesh 16
what 89 let 33 hold 22 meet 16
m 85 good 32 make 22 never 16
was 85 has 32 or 22 order 16
all 84 only 32 still 22 rune 16
can 83 something 32 thanks 22 say 16
if 78 thou 32 come 21 torrent 16
we 76 out 31 give 21 up 16
not 75 take 31 guidance 21 where 16
well 74 perhaps 30 into 21 why 16
no 65 they 30 ever 20 wish 16
do 62 don 29 go 20 yourself 16
ve 62 him 29 marika 20 champion 15
one 60 master 29 though 20 flame 15
so 60 once 29 yet 20 help 15
am 59 should 29 day 19 journey 15
he 59 thee 29 ha 19 might 15
there 59 upon 29 queen 19 new 15
now 58 very 29 ranni 19 some 15
see 58 become 28 ring 19 were 15
would 58 before 28 sure 19 curse 14
ll 57 fingers 28 tell 19 feel 14
oh 57 grace 28 thy 19 hear 14
must 56 own 28 academy 18 lands 14
here 54 place 28 ahh 18 leave 14
Table 3: The 200 most frequent words in the Characters sub-Corpus.
31
Word Keyness Word Keyness
lord 610.309 luminary 90.807
elden 499.729 flesh 89.401
roundtable 433.292 of 88.531
erdtree 412.644 ah 87.106
tarnished 402.499 manor 86.374
thou 264.861 lands 85.954
ranni 230.579 lambkin 84.946
thee 219.110 maidenless 84.946
apprentice 212.784 mohg 84.946
radahn 206.306 haligtree 84.946
glintstone 206.306 iji 84.946
my 196.294 become 84.881
marika 190.226 aren 84.204
rune 186.568 boc 83.254
fingers 177.451 cannot 81.823
torrent 174.172 journey 80.572
radagon 169.897 curse 79.458
the 161.790 volcano 77.988
rennala 157.760 academy 77.392
caelid 157.760 champion 76.488
guidance 156.344 queen 73.611
path 152.983 miquella 72.810
seamster 145.624 hallowbrand 72.810
thy 134.129 lusat 72.810
stormveil 133.488 rykard 72.810
rot 132.430 carian 72.810
don 127.251 limgrave 72.810
wilds 126.609 shall 72.403
upon 125.316 allow 69.295
blaidd 121.352 sorcery 68.668
godrick 121.352 fate 67.612
grace 120.041 will 67.075
warrior 119.105 linger 65.570
master 118.130 am 65.282
must 115.782 rt 64.354
flame 115.338 i 61.978
perhaps 113.396 nepheli 60.675
godwyn 109.217 loux 60.675
hewg 109.217 zorayas 60.675
malenia 109.217 demigod 60.675
lucaria 109.217 ring 58.803
defile 104.619 wouldn 57.494
ahh 103.210 purpose 57.006
demigods 102.720 warriors 56.337
raya 102.720 frenzied 56.202
nokron 97.081 echoes 56.050
seluvis 97.081 primeval 55.273
scarlet 91.243 sorcerer 55.273
runes 90.991 apologies 54.013
grafted 90.807 medallion 53.726
Table 4a: The first half of the top 200 positive keywords of the
Characters sub-Corpus.
32
Word Keyness Word Keyness
spirits 53.537 altus 36.405
indeed 53.526 gelmir 36.405
blessing 53.272 baleful 36.405
reborn 52.993 seedbed 36.405
cursed 52.969 hopest 36.405
golden 52.735 wouldst 36.405
shackles 52.662 tuning 35.316
once 51.416 your 35.263
azur 50.104 shouldn 35.107
ye 49.316 remain 34.636
eater 49.172 spectral 34.505
dung 49.172 kindred 34.152
throne 49.131 ha 33.966
brandish 48.540 battle 33.917
empyrean 48.540 though 33.885
redmane 48.540 ordeal 33.757
ensha 48.540 dynasty 33.701
shardbearers 48.540 despite 33.544
cursemark 48.540 reward 33.442
roderika 48.540 craven 33.300
castle 45.962 lies 33.255
rite 45.902 shattering 33.063
farewell 44.649 great 32.931
aid 44.573 to 32.850
rogier 44.407 truly 32.758
maiden 44.067 share 32.230
but 42.680 strength 32.218
stars 42.396 me 32.118
witch 40.630 harboured 31.911
please 40.411 reviled 31.911
again 40.337 proprietress 31.911
spoken 39.976 slumber 31.834
champions 39.360 spirit 31.794
death 38.677 words 31.788
ask 38.521 wisdom 31.478
dear 37.773 hold 31.336
thine 37.696 deathbed 31.193
smack 37.650 fellow 31.026
needle 37.457 companion 30.684
mere 37.372 such 30.663
heh 37.171 adjustments 30.601
myself 37.128 tread 30.601
festival 36.937 as 29.943
summon 36.673 blighted 29.684
malison 36.405 dogmatic 29.684
mohgwyn 36.405 surmise 29.684
mountaintops 36.405 own 28.832
darriwil 36.405 godfrey 28.168
leyndell 36.405 slain 28.168
lieth 36.405 exalted 28.101
Table 4b: The second half of the top 200 positive keywords of the
33
3.2.2. Frequent words in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ1c-d)
The top 100 most frequent words in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ1c) are given in Table 5.
They include proper names (Ranni, Lusat, Azur, Blaidd), names of “institutions” (e.g.
Raya Lucaria, the most important Lands Between’s magic academy, or Volcano Manor,
home of the dissidents guided by Tanith) and neologisms (Glintstone, Erdtree). Carian
means ‘belonging to the Royal Family of Caria’, an important lineage of mages. Hoslow
is the name of another important family in the Lands Between. Overall, proper names
(including adjectives derived from them) and neologisms are more common here (total:
11 instances among the 100 most frequent words) than in the Characters sub-Corpus
(total: 6 instances over the 200 most frequent words).
In this sub-corpus, too, there are “archaic-sounding” words (e.g. primeval, blade, knight,
sorcerer, manor, sorcery, oath, grand, queen, crown), not because they are attested since
Old English (blade, knight, oath, queen, crown), Middle English (manor, sorcery, grand)
or early Modern English (primeval, sorcerer) – indeed, they are all words of Modern
English – but rather in the sense that they mostly refer to a royal or feudal social context,
which is no longer characteristic of our times (RQ1d).
In particular:
 Primeval, originated in the mid-17th century, meaning “original”, “primitive”

(OED) is rarely used nowadays; in Elden Ring it refers to the Primeval Current,
the origin of sorceries.
 Blade comes from Old English (OED). Its current use refers to the key component
of commonly used tools, such as scissors, knives or razors; in Elden Ring, it refers
to the component of the knights’ typical weapon, the sword.
 Knight originated in Old English (OED) and it is used in Elden Ring with the
proper medieval sense of the term; nowadays, however, it is barely used, apart
from figurative expressions such as “knight-errantry” or “knight of the road”.
 Sorcerer started being used in early 16th century (OED). Its use is nowadays
confined to fantasy literature, as happens in Elden Ring.
 Manor is a Middle English term used to indicate the main house of an aristocratic
estate, as in Elden Ring; it only remains in Modern English as a colloquial
expression referring to “a person’s home ground” (OED).
34
the 271 but 15 hoslow 9 volcano 7
of 171 will 15 used 9 blaidd 6
a 142 at 14 were 9 blue 6
to 87 blood 14 would 9 body 6
and 57 upon 14 ancient 8 erdtree 6
by 54 who 14 are 8 flesh 6
is 49 into 13 blade 8 grand 6
in 41 no 13 current 8 half 6
be 32 worn 13 glintstone 8 jar 6
s 30 once 12 knight 8 key 6
it 29 can 11 ring 8 knowing 6
with 28 on 11 sorcerer 8 lucaria 6
from 27 ranni 11 time 8 oath 6
this 27 their 11 academy 7 order 6
that 26 within 11 armor 7 queen 6
was 26 black 10 had 7 raya 6
for 24 found 10 have 7 received 6
one 22 its 10 lord 7 there 6
as 21 lusat 10 made 7 which 6
an 20 primeval 10 manor 7 bestowed 5
all 18 said 10 new 7 carian 5
her 18 weapon 10 power 7 cold 5
he 17 after 9 she 7 companion 5
his 17 azur 9 sorcery 7 corroded 5
when 16 death 9 those 7 crown 5
Table 5: Word frequency list of the 100 most frequent words in the Objects sub-Corpus.
 Sorcery originated in Middle English, too (OED). Similarly to sorcerer, its use is
rare nowadays.
 Oath comes from Old English (OED), meaning “a solemn or formal declaration
invoking God (or a god, or other object of reverence) as witness to the truth of a
statement”, as is the case in Elden Ring; in current times, the term is only used in
official administrative contexts when performing an act of loyalty or assuming
responsibility in public service.
 Grand originated in Middle English (OED), mainly indicating important public
or government authorities (e.g. grand committee), as in Elden Ring (e.g. grand
masters Azur and Lusat, i.e. two of the most important sorcerers of the Academy
of Raya Lucaria; see above). The use of grand is nowadays mostly evaluative, and
is found in such expressions as the Grand Old Party, the American Republican
Party.
35
 Queen and crown both come from Old English (OED) and have kept the same
meaning over the centuries. Indeed, they are still used to indicate, respectively,
the female sovereigns and the symbolic headgear in contemporary monarchies.
The function words in the word list given in Table are very similar to those in Table 3,
except that – as to be expected – they lack 2nd-person pronouns and possessive thou, thee
and thy.
3.2.3. Frequency of use use of Elden Ring’s vocabulary (RQ1e)
Some of the “archaic-sounding” words which I observed in the two sub-corpora are still
in use (tarnished, apprentice, guidance, rot, primeval, blade, knight, sorcerer, manor,
sorcery, oath, grand, queen, crown; see Sections 3.2.1.–3.2.2.). In order to verify to what
extent they are actually in use in Modern English, I first looked them up in the OED to
determine their frequency per million words in today’s textual sources. Additionally, I
observed the variation in the frequency of use of these words over time on the Google
Ngram Viewer (https://books.google.com/ngrams/). This tool allows an analyst to check
the frequency of use of one or more words as a percentage value of all the Google library
(used as a huge corpus) over a chosen period of time.
Word Hits per million words reported by OED

Queen Slightly above 20
Blade 20
Grand 20
Guidance 20
Crown 10
Warrior 10
Knight 8
Champion 7
Oath Between 5 and 6
Apprentice 4
Manor 3
Rot 2
Sorcerer 1
Sorcery 1
Primeval 1
Tarnished 0.03
Table 6: Number of hits per million words of archaic-sounding

words in Modern English.
36
Table 6 shows the frequency of use of the words under analysis in Modern English
(OED). It appears that the use of these words is uncommon in contemporary English,
being limited to a few tokens per million words.
Picture 17 and Picture 18 show the fluctuations in frequency of use – from 1500 to the
present – of the words in Table 4, as given by Google Ngram Viewer. Picture 17 shows
the frequency curves of queen, grand, guidance, crown, knight, blade, warrior,
champion, while Picture 18 is relevant to oath, manor, rot, primeval, sorcerer, tarnished,
apprentice and sorcery. The use of most of these terms has remarkably decreased over
the last decades. Indeed, knight, manor, queen and crown, in particular, reached a peak
of use between c1550 and c1770, but they are much more rarely used nowadays. Although
they are not, strictly speaking, archaisms, these words are related to “distant” historical
and socio-cultural contexts.
Picture 17: Ngram Viewer results for queen, grand, guidance, crown, knight, blade, warrior and
champion.
Picture 18: Ngram Viewer results for oath, manor, rot, primeval, sorcerer, tarnished, apprentice and
sorcery.
37
3.2.4. General traits of the language of Elden Ring
Overall, the lexis of Elden Ring is not, technically speaking, archaic except for the
presence of old inflectional morphemes (i.e. -rt, -st), function words (i.e. thou, thee, thy).
However, it appears to be relevant to the fantasy world it depicts (a world of sorceries,
legendary knights and gods), since it includes a number of words that refer to a feudal
society as typical of the Middle Ages. This effect is emphasised by the presence of
archaic-sounding compounds (e.g. glintstone, Erdtree), made-up proper names (e.g.
Ranni) and common nouns as proper names (e.g. Torrent). The general impression is that
the lexical make-up of the discourse of Elden Ring depicts a world that is emotionally,
historically, socially and psychologically removed from the today’s world.
3.3. The language of Alexander, Melina, Ranni and Varré (RQ2a-b)

In this section I address RQ2, analysing Alexander’s, Melina’s, Ranni’s and Varré’s
speech. I consider the 200 most frequent words and the top 200 positive keywords in their
speech, along with their most distinctive n-grams (see Sections 3.3.1.-3.3.4.). Finally, I
comment on the results obtained (see Section 3.3.5.).
3.3.1. Alexander’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams
Alexander can be informally defined as the “buddy” character in Elden Ring. He is

friendly, clumsy and funny. However, he does not spare himself when it is time to fight,
as a matter of honour. This is due to his nature. Indeed, Alexander is a warrior jar (see
Picture 19), a magical humanoid jar containing an unknown powerful warrior’s flesh.
Alexander, thus, has a very high opinion of himself, considering himself an unbeatable
warrior.
Table 7 shows Alexander’s most frequent 200 words. Among the function words, the
pronoun I stands out, with a frequency of 91 tokens, much more frequent than the second
most frequent word in the list. This is, of course, a very frequent word in general, but also
suggests that Alexander is self-centred and often talks about himself. Indeed, his speech
mostly focuses on his opinions, his knowledge and his dream of becoming a hero (e.g. I
was created to be a warrior vessel, I am the warrior jar known as Alexander, It’s […] the
38
reason for which I quest). In the Characters sub-Corpus, Alexander is the NPC with the
highest frequency of I, with only Ranni (89 hits) and Roderika (84 hits) reporting similar
values, and followed by Boc the Seamster with a much lower frequency of 70 hits. In
other words, Alexander is a self-referential character.
Alexander also makes frequent use of interjections like ha, heh, ah, oh, eh, o, ahh and
ngh, the last two of which are only used by Alexander in all the Characters sub-Corpus,
(e.g. Ahhh! Ahh! Well player, good lady/sir, Ngh! What are you playing at?).
The presence of words such as ordeal, castle, warrior, battle or combat is due to the jar’s
dream of being a legendary knight, which constantly shapes his way of seeing the events
in the game. Apart from a single use by Melina, ordeal is only used by Alexander (e.g.
Would you kindly undertake my ordeal?). Another relevant word is Caelid (see Section
3.2.1), which denotes where the Warrior Jar’s most epic battle takes place in the game,
by the player’s side.
Alexander’s list of the top 200 most frequent words also includes colloquial expressions
like hello (also the longer version hellooo), gosh (e.g. Gosh, that dead-end had me rather
stumped!) and smack (e.g. That’s my face! Smack from the other end!). While Melina and
Millicent also use hello, but only once, no other character uses gosh or smack.
Picture 19: Alexander talking to the player (YouTube thumbnail, credit: Games from Mars).
39
i 91 ah 6 sure 4 champions 2
the 63 am 6 than 4 chip 2
a 54 could 6 we 4 closer 2
you 54 do 6 after 3 combat 2
to 47 end 6 ahh 3 crack 2
me 32 hello 6 battle 3 crock 2
of 31 know 6 been 3 day 2
it 27 myself 6 blighted 3 despite 2
my 26 nice 6 break 3 doesn 2
and 20 no 6 d 3 eastward 2
s 19 now 6 dead 3 fear 2
as 18 smack 6 edge 3 feel 2
m 17 stuck 6 eventually 3 feeling 2
this 16 thanks 6 fine 3 find 2
in 15 think 6 greater 3 flame 2
good 13 again 5 hardly 3 flames 2
is 13 big 5 held 3 flesh 2
just 13 by 5 lady 3 fought 2
that 13 caelid 5 let 3 found 2
be 12 champion 5 look 3 get 2
from 12 don 5 might 3 giant 2
ha 12 face 5 pop 3 gosh 2
ll 12 help 5 rot 3 greatest 2
out 12 how 5 scarlet 3 heading 2
what 12 oh 5 set 3 hear 2
but 11 other 5 sir 3 heard 2
can 11 re 5 so 3 hellooo 2
have 11 thought 5 southern 3 his 2
was 11 wait 5 stop 3 hitting 2
here 10 warriors 5 take 3 hole 2
see 10 which 5 then 3 if 2
t 10 wilds 5 thing 3 indeed 2
ve 10 would 5 though 3 journey 2
all 9 about 4 time 3 known 2
are 9 at 4 us 3 made 2
one 9 behind 4 vessel 3 man 2
there 9 come 4 where 3 many 2
your 9 eh 4 who 3 mighty 2
heh 8 ever 4 yourself 3 mountain 2
on 8 fist 4 aflutter 2 never 2
warrior 8 friend 4 air 2 ngh 2
with 8 inside 4 an 2 old 2
alexander 7 iron 4 anyone 2 or 2
festival 7 jar 4 appearance 2 perhaps 2
for 7 like 4 back 2 pity 2
give 7 more 4 before 2 place 2
great 7 o 4 being 2 played 2
something 7 off 4 bodies 2 ready 2
such 7 ordeal 4 calculations 2 redmane 2
well 7 please 4 castle 2 right 2
Table 7: Alexander’s 200 most frequent words.
40
Interestingly (and as to be expected), the jar’s most peculiar linguistic feature is the use
of the lexis of vessels, such as jar, break, vessel (e.g. […] without fear of cracking this
vessel), chip (e.g. I am but a chip off a greater jar), crack (e.g. One hit was all it took to
crack me) and crock (e.g. I […] am nothing but a crock). Indeed, apart from a single use
of break by Miriel, all the other terms listed are only used by Alexander.
Table 8 shows the positive keywords in Alexander’s speech when compared to the rest
of the Characters sub-Corpus. All the keywords identified are also listed among the 200
most frequent words (see Table 7), including interjections (e.g. ha, heh), expressions of a
colloquial register (e.g. smack, hello) and terms relevant to vessels (e.g. jar).
Word Keyness
alexander 32.866
ha 32.766
smack 28.168
heh 25.276
big 23.471
nice 22.627
good 21.649
hello 19.572
stuck 19.572
festival 19.248
out 18.796
fist 18.774
iron 18.774
jar 18.774
Table 8: Alexander’s distinctive keywords.
The 3-grams and 4-grams with a frequency of 3 or more hits in Alexander’s speech are
reported in Table 9. Among these, ha ha ha (6 hits) and a good smack (5 hits), along with
all the n-grams including smack, appear to be in line with the character’s personality, that
is his use of interjections and a colloquial register.
Overall, Alexander’s distinctive linguistic traits are the use of interjections, colloquial
expressions, chivalric lexis and the use of specific terminology related to vases.
41
Frequency 3-grams 4-grams
6 ha ha ha ---
5 a good smack a good smack from
give me a give me a good
good smack from me a good smack
me a good
with something nice
4 behind with something behind with something nice
from behind with from behind with something
nice and big good smack from behind
smack from behind smack from behind with
something nice and something nice and big
with something nice and
3 blighted caelid wilds ha ha ha ha
i ll pop rot blighted caelid wilds
i m stuck scarlet rot blighted caelid
i m sure the scarlet rot blighted
iron fist alexander
just you wait
me i m
rot blighted caelid
scarlet rot blighted
the scarlet rot
there s a
to be a
Table 9: Alexander’s most frequent n-grams. (Note: - - - stands for ‘No relevant n-
gram’.)
3.3.2. Melina’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams
Melina is the gentle guide who accompanies the player during the whole game, giving
suggestions and indications about her/his mission in the Lands Between. She gives the
player her/his steed and sacrifices herself before the end of the game to burn the Erdtree,
allowing the player to defeat Queen Marika. Melina is thus a key figure in Elden Ring.
Table 10 shows the most frequent words in Melina’s speech. These are connected to the
journey that the player undertakes in the lands between and her/his final sacrifice: lord,
Marika, Erdtree, Flame, Grace, Elden, Torrent, echoes (the Echoes of Queen Marika,
messages left by Marika which only Melina perceives), Queen, Frenzied (the Frenzied
Flame is one of the most dangerous negative forces in Elden Ring, which the player has
to protect her/himself from), mother, guidance, maiden, giants (who own the fire to burn
the Erdtree), golden, guide, journey, lands, order, ruin, summon, tarnished, burn, burned,
destined, faith, finger, god, Godfrey (the boss who challenges the player before the game’s
42
final bossfight; see Section 2.3.1.), inherited, mountaintops (where the flame to burn the
Erdtree is held), rays, reason, search and seek. Interestingly, these words are part of the
top 200 most frequent in the Characters sub-Corpus, but a high number of their tokens
are found in Melina’s speech only (e.g. flame has 15 hits in the Characters sub-Corpus,
11 of which only in Melina’s speech, and 40% of the total use of Erdtree by the game’s
characters is found in her speech).
In order to identify positive keywords in Melina’s speech, I compared it against the rest
of the Characters sub-Corpus. These words are reported in Table 11, and are also listed
among the most frequent ones in Table 10. They highlight the relevance of Melina’s role
to the player’s journey (e.g. Marika, flame, frenzied, Erdtree, Torrent). Interestingly, one
keyword that is not also a frequent word is the form ye, the Old English 2nd-person plural
subject pronoun, also used “as a mark of respect, deference” (OED); (e.g. Ye will wage
war in a land afar, where ye will live, and die).
Melina’s most recurrent n-grams are reported in Table 12. They mostly involve reference
to Marika. Indeed, Melina’s role in the game mostly depends on the magic tracks left by
the queen, which the player is supposed to follow, thanks to Melina’s help (see Tarnished
in Section 3.2.1.). Once can also notice the recurrent mention of Melina’s willingness to
be of use to the player (see shall I share and share them with you).
Thus, the results show that Melina’s lexis is mostly focused on the journey in the Lands
Between, which emphasises her function as a guide. Indeed, she supports the player
during the entire game, and addresses her/him with the archaic and deferential form ye,
which suggests Melina’s reverence for the future lord of the Lands Between.
43
the 104 all 6 into 3 challenge 2
i 66 frenzied 6 journey 3 chaos 2
you 65 if 6 land 3 clouds 2
to 59 long 6 lands 3 commit 2
of 52 m 6 life 3 d 2
a 29 mother 6 live 3 day 2
is 27 no 6 now 3 deny 2
my 26 purpose 6 or 3 destined 2
and 20 upon 6 order 3 divest 2
in 20 very 6 our 3 do 2
with 19 was 6 path 3 does 2
me 18 aid 5 put 3 done 2
that 17 at 5 rest 3 end 2
lord 16 death 5 ruin 3 epoch 2
for 14 guidance 5 see 3 eyes 2
it 14 let 5 should 3 faith 2
marika 14 must 5 summon 3 finger 2
your 14 please 5 take 3 glad 2
as 13 strength 5 tarnished 3 god 2
erdtree 13 who 5 thank 3 godfrey 2
shall 12 yet 5 thanks 3 goodbye 2
flame 11 an 4 then 3 hark 2
here 11 fit 4 they 3 hear 2
s 11 from 4 through 3 however 2
well 11 maiden 4 thy 3 inherited 2
are 10 moment 4 till 3 just 2
but 10 new 4 time 3 leave 2
grace 10 offer 4 turn 3 lend 2
will 10 only 4 warriors 3 lies 2
become 9 runes 4 what 3 lifeless 2
elden 9 we 4 when 3 like 2
have 9 world 4 which 3 lost 2
not 9 would 4 wish 3 make 2
own 9 accord 3 above 2 may 2
torrent 9 ago 3 act 2 mine 2
ye 9 am 3 after 2 mountaintops 2
be 8 ask 3 ahead 2 need 2
by 8 between 3 allow 2 o 2
ring 8 continue 3 almost 2 once 2
share 8 face 3 ascertain 2 other 2
them 8 far 3 asking 2 over 2
this 8 foot 3 back 2 place 2
words 8 giants 3 being 2 prepared 2
can 7 given 3 beyond 2 preside 2
echoes 7 golden 3 births 2 rays 2
linger 7 guide 3 born 2 reach 2
one 7 hand 3 brandish 2 reason 2
queen 7 has 3 burn 2 rt 2
spoken 7 he 3 burned 2 search 2
there 7 him 3 cardinal 2 seek 2
Table 10: Melina’s 200 most frequent words.
44
Word Keyness
marika 43.153
ye 42.672
flame 35.551
echoes 33.182
linger 33.182
frenzied 28.438
shall 27.223
spoken 24.039
share 23.433
torrent 22.111
erdtree 20.533
words 19.979
Table 11: Melina’s distinctive keywords.

8 share them with ---
7 in marika s in marika s own
marika s own marika s own words
of queen marika share them with you
of the erdtree
s own words
them with you
6 as well shall as well shall i
echoes of queen echoes of queen marika
here as well here as well shall
i share them i share them with
linger here as linger here as well
marika linger here marika linger here as
queen marika linger of queen marika linger
shall i share queen marika linger here
spoken echoes of shall i share them
well shall i spoken echoes of queen
with you in them with you in
you in marika well shall i share
with you in marika
you in marika s
5 the elden ring ---
4 the frenzied flame ---
3 but a moment foot of the erdtree
flame of ruin for but a moment
foot of the hand rest upon you
for but a let my hand rest
hand rest upon my hand rest upon
let my hand rest upon you for
my hand rest the flame of ruin
rest upon you the foot of the
the flame of upon you for but
the foot of you for but a
the lands between
upon you for
you for but
Table 12: Melina’s most frequent n-grams. (Note: - - - stands for ‘No relevant n-
gram’.)
45
3.3.3. Ranni’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams
Ranni is the mysterious figure behind the betrayal which caused the disruption of the
Golden Order, the architect of the demigods’ falling. She comes into contact with the
player, as their mission is very similar, and thus they can be very useful to each other.
Indeed, the player can even marry her. She is the only actual demigod with whom the
player establishes a friendly relationship.
The 200 most used words by Ranni the Witch are reported in Table 13. Ranni is the only
character to frequently use archaic function words. Indeed, 30 of the 32 total hits for thou
in the Characters sub-Corpus belong to Ranni; similarly, 28 of the 29 instances of thee,
16 of the 19 instances of thy and 3 of the 5 instances of thine are found in Ranni’s speech.
In line with this, most of the verbs with archaic 2nd-person and 3rd-person endings found
in the Characters sub-Corpus belong to Ranni’s speech. They include those listed in
Table 13 (i.e. -rt, wouldst, canst, cometh, didst, lieth), but also 9 of the 10 verbs ending
in –(e)th (e.g. Here beginneth the chill night […]), all the 12 occurrences of the verbs
ending in -st (e.g. Whouldst thou come to me […]) and 8 of the 10 occurrences of the
verbs ending in -rt (e.g. Art thou aware of the star that struck Limgrave?). These register
choices might have been intended to highlight her divine nature in contrast to the other
characters.
Moreover, Ranni’s lexis includes many words (e.g. as witch, dark, death, spectral, hidden
or moon) revealing her fascination with darkness, death and shadows.
The positive keywords in Ranni’s speech are also listed among her most frequent words.
As Table 14 shows, Ranni’s keywords include archaic morphemes (e.g. thou, thee, thy, -
rt) and lexis depicting a “dark” world (e.g. dark, witch). However, the keywords also
include words not part of the frequency word list, namely the function word hath, an
archaic form of has, and the word Empyrean, which serves to refer to Ranni’s privileged
divine nature (e.g. I was once an Empyrean. Of the demigods, only I, Miquella, and
Malenia could claim that title).
46
the 107 rt 6 fine 3 between 2
i 89 see 6 flesh 3 beyond 2
to 47 witch 6 forget 3 body 2
of 45 an 5 forth 3 both 2
and 35 good 5 go 3 breath 2
a 32 into 5 hidden 3 call 2
it 30 long 5 hopest 3 came 2
thou 30 may 5 lands 3 can 2
is 28 mine 5 last 3 canst 2
thee 28 name 5 leave 3 chill 2
my 27 one 5 moon 3 chosen 2
in 18 order 5 more 3 cometh 2
not 17 past 5 much 3 command 2
thy 16 ranni 5 must 3 counselor 2
but 15 there 5 nokron 3 cursing 2
for 15 they 5 oh 3 dear 2
have 15 too 5 on 3 didst 2
that 15 dark 4 once 3 doing 2
this 14 death 4 other 3 enough 2
what 13 each 4 our 3 every 2
as 12 empyrean 4 profit 3 far 2
be 12 hath 4 quite 3 fate 2
me 12 here 4 seluvis 3 feel 2
with 12 iji 4 shadows 3 finally 2
am 11 lord 4 since 3 form 2
now 11 night 4 slumber 3 former 2
was 11 only 4 so 3 found 2
we 11 perhaps 4 stole 3 gaining 2
all 10 same 4 such 3 great 2
will 10 spectral 4 sure 3 haste 2
would 9 steed 4 take 3 he 2
fingers 8 their 4 tell 3 heard 2
s 8 then 4 thanks 3 heart 2
shall 8 when 4 thine 3 heed 2
them 8 again 3 time 3 him 2
two 8 allow 3 treasure 3 indeed 2
blaidd 7 aren 3 us 3 indulge 2
by 7 ask 3 way 3 journey 2
from 7 away 3 which 3 just 2
service 7 baleful 3 wouldst 3 kind 2
t 7 become 3 about 2 let 2
tarnished 7 been 3 advantage 2 lieth 2
torrent 7 below 3 age 2 living 2
upon 7 city 3 ago 2 master 2
well 7 cursemark 3 another 2 matter 2
ah 6 doubt 3 art 2 meet 2
are 6 enter 3 arts 2 merely 2
before 6 eternal 3 assassins 2 might 2
no 6 even 3 at 2 named 2
path 6 find 3 back 2 or 2
Table 13: Ranni’s 200 most frequent words.
47
Word Keyness
thou 123.842
thee 120.643
thy 57.749
blaidd 20.624
rt 19.029
dark 18.399
empyrean 18.399
hath 18.399
service 16.962
witch 16.780
Table 14: Ranni’s distinctive keywords.
Ranni’s most recurrent n-grams are reported in Table 15. The most frequent 3-gram is the
two fingers. The Two Fingers are manifestations of the greater will in the Lands Between,
and therefore have always been consulted by the sovereigns as oracles, establishing the
demigods’ destiny. Ranni fights against this predestination; thus it is not surprising that
she recurrently refers to it. The second most recurrent 3-gram, the dark path, is
reminiscent of Ranni’s shadowy and lunar nature, in opposition to the shiny Golden
Order.

7 the two fingers ---
4 the dark path ---
3 am the witch hopest thou to profit
aren t we i am the witch
hopest thou to what hopest thou to
i am sure
i am the
ranni the witch
the baleful shadows
the name of
the spectral steed
thou rt a
thou to profit
what hopest thou
Table 15: Ranni’s most frequent n-grams.

(Notes: - - - stands for ‘No relevant n-gram’. There are no n-grams with a
frequency of 5 or 6 tokens.)
48
Overall, Ranni’s speech appears to highlight, on the one hand, her divine nature (e.g. her
use of Empyrean and of archaic grammatical forms stress her social distance from the
other characters and the gamer), and on the other, her connection to darkness (see, e.g.
her use of shadows, dark, baleful and spectral).
3.3.4. Varré’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams
Varré is the “tempting devil” of the game. He is a former war surgeon, turned into a
psychopath by a plague (the Lord of Blood’s curse) which killed all his colleagues, but
which he was able to survive. Thus, he thinks he was chosen by the Lord of Blood to be
his spokesman. He is agreeable to the player (despite his evident mental insanity),
tempting her/him with apparently convenient and honourable purposes which,
systematically, lead her/him to very risky situations.
Varré’s 200 most frequent words are reported in Table 16. Varré’s lexis is mostly about
the Golden Order, which he describes in a negative way (e.g. […] the decrepit demigod
[…], […] the Fingers harbor no love for our kind), his faith in Mohg, the Lord of Blood
and his dynasty (e.g. Luminary Mohg, dynasty, Mohgwyn), and the indications which he
gives to the player about the steps to follow to prove her/his faith in Mohg (e.g.
Roundtable, Stormveil, blood, trial, cloth, maiden/maidenless). The reason why the words
maiden and maidenless occur in the list is that, at a certain point in the game, Varré will
ask the player to kill a maiden and bring her blood, collected on a cloth, to him, as a proof
of faith.
Varré also uses the endearment term lambkin to address the player (comparable to Ranni’s
dear consort (if married), Fia’s my dear and Alexander’s good lady/sir). Considering that
it is very rare to hear a character use nice words in Elden Ring in general, and that Varré
is a mean character, in particular, this word only contributes to highlighting Varré’s
pretence – he sounds sarcastically sweet and contextually inappropriate, while talking
about blood and murder (e.g. Right, my lambkin? […] You seek violence […], I’ll ensure
you regret this, my lambkin. Enjoy your miserable death).
49
the 77 without 5 very 3 wise 2
you 72 ahh 4 was 3 worse 2
to 36 at 4 who 3 yourself 2
a 32 audience 4 would 3 acquired 1
of 32 castle 4 yet 3 after 1
i 19 even 4 acquire 2 agony 1
for 17 godrick 4 again 2 also 1
it 16 hold 4 ah 2 always 1
my 15 love 4 am 2 anoint 1
and 14 me 4 as 2 another 1
your 14 new 4 chamber 2 answer 1
s 13 on 4 choice 2 answers 1
that 12 please 4 day 2 any 1
are 11 ve 4 decrepit 2 anyone 1
be 11 way 4 demigod 2 aren 1
have 11 we 4 die 2 assist 1
with 11 yes 4 final 2 badge 1
but 9 all 3 find 2 basking 1
fingers 9 an 3 finger 2 beens 1
oh 9 been 3 follow 2 before 1
roundtable 9 by 3 gift 2 behold 1
two 9 cliff 3 give 2 being 1
in 8 course 3 golden 2 believe 1
luminary 8 don 3 grant 2 beside 1
must 8 done 3 granted 2 besides 1
this 8 elden 3 guide 2 between 1
will 8 go 3 had 2 binds 1
grace 7 grafted 3 he 2 blame 1
ha 7 has 3 hear 2 bless 1
lambkin 7 indeed 3 here 2 can 1
may 7 knight 3 home 2 cannot 1
mohg 7 maiden 3 however 2 care 1
t 7 mm 3 inductee 2 ceremony 1
blood 6 mohgwyn 3 inner 2 certainly 1
do 6 no 3 its 2 challenge 1
dynasty 6 now 3 just 2 chance 1
guidance 6 off 3 kind 2 chests 1
if 6 or 3 m 2 chock 1
is 6 out 3 matter 2 circumventing 1
maidenless 6 path 3 most 2 claimed 1
so 6 perhaps 3 noble 2 clear 1
stormveil 6 proper 3 not 2 clench 1
then 6 re 3 only 2 cloth 1
well 6 ring 3 seek 2 come 1
what 6 say 3 something 2 commences 1
great 5 see 3 think 2 completed 1
lord 5 should 3 trial 2 comprehend 1
one 5 strength 3 try 2 congratulations 1
rune 5 take 3 why 2 corrupted 1
tarnished 5 there 3 wisdom 2 death 1
Table 16: Varré’s 200 most frequent words.
50
Varré’s positive keywords, reported in Table 17, highlight his interest in the player’s path
to the throne (e.g. audience, Stormveil, Fingers), his connection to the Lord of Blood (e.g.
luminary, Mohg, Mohgwyn, blood) and his frequent interaction with the gamer, addressed
as lambkin. All the keywords also show up among the most frequent words (cf. Table ).
Varré’s most recurrent n-grams are reported in Table 18. The most recurrent 3-gram is
the two fingers, entities he fights against (like Ranni; see Section 3.3.3.). The other
recurrent n-grams mostly refer to the mission which the player is destined to undertake
(a Great Rune that is a components through which the player is supposed to recreate the
Elden Ring (see Section 1.3.); the Roundtable Hold is one of the first places which she/he
is supposed to reach in the game).
Word Keyness
luminary 43.356
lambkin 37.931
mohg 37.931
dynasty 26.903
maidenless 26.903
you 22.762
audience 21.665
stormveil 18.037
two 17.574
blood 16.697
knight 16.247
mm 16.247
mohgwyn 16.247
fingers 16.226
ha 14.572
Table 17: Varré’s distinctive keywords.

8 the two fingers ---
7 --- ---
6 --- ---
5 a great rune ---
4 of the two of the two fingers
the roundtable hold
3 audience with the audience with the two
godrick the grafted with the two fingers
on the cliff
the elden ring
to castle stormveil
with the two
you are maidenless
Table 18: Varré’s most frequent n-grams. (Notes: - - - stands for ‘No relevant
n-gram’.)
51
Overall, the lexis in Varré’s speech is relavant to his role-relationship with the player on
his way to the throne and becoming the Lord of Blood’s reign.
3.3.5. Implications
To sum up, Alexander speaks in a colloquial and, at the same time, chivalric way, using
specific lexis related to vases. He is, indeed, a friendly although proud warrior jar. Melina
speaks as and like a guide, addressing the player with indications about the path to follow.
Ranni’s speech is archaic-sounding and full of references to obscurity, night and death,
revealing her nature as a powerful demigod of night. Varré’s obsessive opposition to the
Golden Order, along with his shrewdness, show up in his recurrent reference to to the
Lord of Blood and the Golden Order, along with the sneaky nice way of addressing the
player. The results thus suggest that each character’s speech has distinctive characteristics
in line with the character’s personality.
3.4. The language of object descriptions in Elden Ring (RQ3)
In this section, I address RQ3 by firstly comparing the two sub-corpora in order to find
the positive keywords that characterise the Objects sub-Corpus (see Section 3.4.1.), and
then identifying this sub-corpus’s distinctive phraseologies (see Section 3.4.2.). In the
end, I make some general considerations (see Section 3.4.3.).
3.4.1. Keywords in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ3a)
AntConc retrieved 25 keywords in the Objects sub-Corpus compared to the Characters

sub-Corpus (see Table 19). These include nouns like weapon, blade, armor, oath, robe,
gauntlets, crown, glintstones and adjectives describing them (e.g. used, black, primeval,
worn, blue, corroded, cold), which denote the properties of objects relevant to a decaying
chivalric world. Hoslow is a surname (see Section 3.2.2.). Other words, such as raises,
increases and potency belong instead to technical aspect of gameplay. Indeed, these terms
are present in sentences like Greatly raises attack power with successive attacks,
Charging increases duration of the breath or Charging enhances potency, which refer to
52
talismans or spells and represent suggestions about how the player is supposed to use
these tools in the most proficient ways when fighting.
Word Keyness
by 64.296
worn 45.481
of 38.488
a 34.303
hoslow 31.479
weapon 28.658
blade 27.979
armor 24.480
used 21.811
blue 20.982
oath 20.982
black 19.754
an 18.514
primeval 17.792
blood 17.671
robe 17.484
raises 17.484
increases 17.484
potency 17.484
gauntlets 17.484
crown 17.484
corroded 17.484
cold 17.484
glintstones 17.484
the 17.379
Table 19: The 25 keywords in the Objects

sub-Corpus.
3.4.2. Phraseologies in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ3b)
The most frequent 3-grams and 4-grams in the Objects sub-Corpus are reported in Table
20. Some are built around the verb find (e.g. can be found), which occur in sentences in
which the player is given indications about how to proceed in the game (e.g. The door
can be found in the westward corridor […], The forge of the flame of ruin is said to be
found upon their peaks […]). Other recurrent n-grams include proper names referring to
places (e.g. Raya Lucaria) or characters (e.g. the Dung Eater) of the game, and which
thus the player has to be informed about.
As to be expected, the Objects sub-corpus shows only a negligible presence of 1st and
2nd-person pronouns, especially in comparison to the Characters’s sub-Corpus (see Table
53
21). Also, apart from a single instance of you, the other tokens retrieved are found in the
transcripts, that is, quotes from characters’ utterances. The likely reason for this
discrepancy is that the sentences contained in the Objects sub-Corpus almost always have
a third-person subject, as is typical of a discourse focused on the description of entities
and events.

9 one of the ---
5 found in the ---
of raya lucaria
the dung eater
4 academy of raya academy of raya lucaria
be found in the academy of raya
corroded by blue
is said to
primeval current sorcerer
said to be
the academy of
the all knowing
3 armor gauntlets greaves by the dung eater
by lusat primeval can be found in
by the dung fia the deathbed companion
can be found is said to be
fia the deathbed
glimpsed into the
helm armor gauntlets
ranni the witch
said to have
the deathbed companion
the eternal city
the golden order
the volcano manor
Table 20: The Objects sub-Corpus’s most frequent n-grams.
Word Frequency in the transcripts Frequency in the prose Frequency in the

of the Objects sub-Corpus texts of the Objects Characters sub-
sub-Corpus corpus
I 2 0 753
Me 0 0 196
Ye 0 0 9
You 4 1 605
Thou 1 0 32
Thee 0 0 29
Table 21: Frequency of 1st- and 2nd-person pronouns in the Objects sub-Corpus and the
54
3.4.3. Considerations about the linguistic traits of the Objects sub-Corpus
Overall, the frequent presence of terms referring to objects (particularly medieval

weapons or armors and spells) and, to a lesser extent, characters, along with the presence
of technical gameplay-related expressions suggest that the Objects sub-Corpus is meant
to be directly relevant to the needs of a gamer who has to orientate him-/herself in moving
in the video game’s world.
3.5. General implications
The first impression I had of the language in Elden Ring while playing the game was that
it sounded archaic. With this investigation, I set out to determine what this might be due
to (see RQ1). What I found was only partly in line with my expectations: the language
Elden Ring language is not, technically, archaic: it mainly consists of words still present
in Modern English; but some of these words are used in the game in senses that are no
longer the default ones nowadays, but were more common in the past (e.g. master is used
to mean ‘expert smith’ rather than ‘university degree’, champion is used to mean ‘winning
warrior’ rather than ‘sports champion’). In addition, it includes archaic function words
and morphemes, archaic-sounding neologisms and esoteric proper names relating to a
historically and socially distant chivalric world (see Section 3.2.). All of this contributes
to creating the impression of a historically distant context.
Another impression I formed as a player was that the characters’ ways of expressing were
very different from one another and always in line with their personality and role in the
game (see RQ2). The analysis of the speech of four main characters, compared against
the speech of all the other characters, provided support for my impression. The frequent
words, keywords and recurrent n-grams in a given character’s speech is indeed peculiar
to and distinctive of that character only, being hardly ever shared with those of other
characters.
Finally, the last part of the analysis shows what is distinctive about the object descriptions
(see RQ3), something that I had also intuitively notice: rather than giving additional
information relevant to the plot, the object descriptions especially tend to give practical
gaming indications to the player. Thus, I would state that the Characters sub-Corpus
55
addresses the avatar impersonating the gamer in the game world, while the Objects sub-
Corpus addresses the player behind it (see Section 3.4.).
In the final Chapter, I will offer general considerations about the present analysis.
56
CHAPTER 4
CONCLUSION
4.1. Introduction
In this Chapter, I firstly summarise the goals and results of my study and relate them to
my RQs (Section 4.2.). Then, I highlight the pros and cons of my work (Section 4.3.), and
finally offer suggestions for future research (Section 4.4.).
4.2. My goals and results
With this study I wanted to shed light on the lexical features of a soulslike game, Elden
Ring, which I am passionate about, and which, as far as I know, had never been examined
before from a linguistic point of view. As an expert player of this game, I had made some
impressionistic observations about it. First, I thought I had noticed that the language of
Elden Ring sounded archaic, considering how the characters speak, how objects are
described, what characters (e.g. Lord of Blood, Queen Marika) and places (e.g. Volcano
Manor, the Academy of Raya Lucaria) are called, and how characters are addressed (e.g.
master, champion). Second, I had the impression that each character has a distinctive way
of speaking (i.e. in their use of phraseologies), which is in line with their personality,
behaviour and role in the game. Finally, it seemed to me that the language spoken by the
characters interacting with the player’s avatar was quite different from the language used
to describe the objects used in the game, which is instead more directly relevant to the
player him-/herself. It was these observations that prompted my research questions.
In order to draw a lexical profile of the language of Elden Ring, I adopted a corpus-driven
approach. Therefore, I created two sub-corpora, one containing the speech of the
characters and one containing the descriptions of the objects relevant to them. I then set
out to examine their most frequent words, positive keywords and recurrent n-grams. I
thought this would enable me to identify themes often mentioned in the game and
recurrent phraseological patterns. I also examined if the frequency of use of a few selected
frequent words and prominent keywords in Elden Ring had changed over the centuries,
in order to determine if their usage was more common in earlier or in modern times.
Moreover, I compared the speech of each of 4 main characters against the speech of all
57
other characters so as to identify distinctive lexis and phraseology of each of those
characters.
The identification of frequent words, keywords and n-grams in the Characters sub-
Corpus showed the presence of archaic function words (e.g. thou, thee, thy, ye) and
morphemes (e.g. hopest, cometh), and the recurrence of terms referring to entities and
phenomena relevant to a crepuscular medieval fantasy world (e.g. manor, warrior,
sorcerer), rather than today’s world.
I also found that, although most oft words in Elden Ring are still in use, they may give an
impression of antiquity for two reasons: some are used less frequently nowadays
compared to the past, while others have a default present-day meaning which is not the
meaning that applies in Elden Ring (e.g. champion means a prize-winning athlete in
Modern English, but an undefeated warrior in Elden Ring).
When I compared the speech of each of four chosen main characters against the speech
of all the other characters in the game, I was able to identify its distinctive traits, that is,
each character’s peculiar way of speaking (i.e. recurrent “pet phrases”) is in line with their
personality and role in the game (e.g. Alexander, the warrior jar, speaks in a friendly,
colloquial way, often referring to vases; Melina, a guide for the player, often talks about
the journey the player undertakes; Ranni, the dark semi-divine witch, often refers to the
world of darkness, and uses Old English words; Varré, the insane adept of the Lord of
Blood, often uses lexis dealing with blood and addresses the player with formally nice,
but sarcastic, address term).
Finally, I found that object descriptions include terms related to medieval armours and
weapons, and others typical of the “technical” RPG jargon unique to this sub-corpus. This
suggests that object descriptions are a distinct sub-genre, as they serve a different
communicative function compared to the characters’ speech; indeed, they include
information and suggestions useful to the player.
4.3. Pros and cons of the study
My work is innovative in that it presents a linguistic analysis of Elden Ring, drawing a

partial lexical profile of it, which was not carried out before. It shows that, in this context
58
too, language both reflects and contributes to shaping the role and personality of specific
characters, as well as determining the different communicative function of different parts
of the game. In addition, my work is relevant to players: these can improve their efficiency
in Elden Ring if they pay attention to what characters’ speech reveals about them, that is,
players can reduce the risk of being involved in dangerous situations in the game world.
Moreover, in my analysis assessed the degree to which Elden Ring’s language sounded
archaic not only by identifying obsolete words and morphemes, which are a minority in
the whole dataset which I considered, but rather I also focused on the less common uses
of these words in Modern English and their decreasing use over time. This informal “data
triangulation” contributed to determining to what extent Elden Ring may be described as
archaic-sounding.
However, my work also suffers from some limitations. First, my analysis of the language
of Elden Ring is not exhaustive. Elden Ring is a huge game and thus impossible to
examine single-handedly. Indeed, my data did not include the transcripts of the speech of
all the characters in the game. This means that my findings cannot be generalised beyond
the stretches of discourse considered.
Also, since I analysed the speech of only some characters and the objects relevant to them;
I did not consider the full range of neologisms, placenames, and characters’ proper names
to be found in Elden Ring. It is possible that an examination of their etymology could
contribute to illustrating the relevance of Old English and Middle English to the discourse
of the game.
Moreover, I compared the characters’ speech to the speech of modern speakers of English,
rather than the speech of characters in other video games. As the two corpora consist of
texts produced in different contexts and relevant to different historical periods, a high
number of differences necessarily emerged. Maybe more enlightening results could
emerge from comparing the speech of Elden Ring’s characters to that of characters in
other soulslike games, such as Bloodborne or, better, Dark Souls (also set in a medieval
decaying world).
59
4.4. Suggestions for future research
Future research could examinate the semantic roles (e.g. Agent, Patient, Experiencer,
Carrier of attribute) played by the referents of the subject noun phrases identifying the
four main characters and the player. The frequency and dispersion could reveal the degree
of agency attributed to the characters vs the player in the game.
Studies could also examine the length and syntactic complexity of the utterances in the
characters’ speech in order to check if a correlation can be established between their way
of speaking and their behaviour; for example, my impression is that characters that tend
to express themselves in a hermetic, and syntactically complex, way have secrets to keep.
A perception study could also be carried out among players, asking them to indicate how
archaic they perceive the language of the game to be in general, or to describe the
language of some characters in particular and provide the motivations to their answers.
Future linguistic studies of Elden Ring could also focus on the comparison of the speech
of the characters believing in the Golden Order and that of its opponents to check whether
their different roles are also reflected in their discourse. My impression is that the
characters believing in the Golden Order, in general, use lexis related to “light”, while
their opponents use lexis relevant to “darkness’. This could involve identifying keywords
and recurrent phraseologies in the two datasets and checking the degree to which they are
unshared.
Another linguistic analysis could be focused on loanwords in Elden Ring. Indeed, while
playing the game, I noticed the occasional use of Latin by some characters (e.g. characters
similar to harpies can be heard singing a Latin sad song from the distance and the Lord
of Blood uses a Latin countdown before showing his true power in the bossfight against
him: tres, duo, unus, nihil), and of German to denote objects or characters (e.g. a long
sword called Zweihander ‘two hands’) or Japanese to denote characters (e.g. Samurai); it
would be interesting to determine whether these words are typical only of some
characters, and if so which ones, and thus to explore the possible relevance of these other
languages to their different personality traits.
Studying Elden Ring in relation to other soulslike games, too, would be worthwhile. For
example, there are some characters, weapons, armours or objects in general which are
60
recurrent in soulslike games. For example, one of Elden Ring’s characters, called Patches,
is also present in the Dark Souls trilogy and in Demons Souls. Comparing this character’s
speech in different narrative universes could reveal whether his recurrent words and
phraseologies indeed remain the same in the different games or not. Similarly, this method
could be applied to descriptions of armours and weapons such as the Moonlight
Greatsword, which are found in various soulslike games, and see if they are described in
the same way across games or not.
61
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67

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Università degli Studi di Padova

Dipartimento di Studi Linguistici e Letterari

Corso di Laurea Triennale Interclasse in

Soulslike video games —

Anno Accademico 2022/2023

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................... 5

1.1. Introduction .......................................................................................................5

1.2. Soulslike games.................................................................................................5

1.3. What Elden Ring is............................................................................................8

1.3.1. White Mask Varré’s quest as an example of relationship with

an NPC in Elden Ring .........................................................................10

1.5. The language of Elden Ring ............................................................................13

1.6. Conclusion ......................................................................................................14

CHAPTER 2 BACKGROUND AND METHOD ....................................................... 15

2.1. Introduction .....................................................................................................15

2.2. Background .....................................................................................................15

2.3. Method ............................................................................................................17

2.3.1. Data collection ....................................................................................17

2.3.2. The research questions........................................................................25

CHAPTER 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................ 27

3.1. Introduction .....................................................................................................27

3.2. The language of Elden Ring (RQ1).................................................................27

3.2.1. Frequent words and positive keywords in the Characters sub-Corpus

3.2.2. Frequent words in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ1c-d) ........................34

3.2.4. General traits of the language of Elden Ring ......................................38

3.3.1. Alexander’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams .........................38

3.3.2. Melina’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams...............................42

3.3.3. Ranni’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams ................................46

3.3.4. Varré’s frequent words, keywords and n-grams .................................49

3.3.5. Implications ........................................................................................52

3.4. The language of object descriptions in Elden Ring (RQ3) .............................52

3.4.1. Keywords in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ3a) ....................................52

3.4.2. Phraseologies in the Objects sub-Corpus (RQ3b) ..............................53

3.4.3. Considerations about the linguistic traits of the

Objects sub-Corpus ............................................................................55

3.5. General implications .......................................................................................55

CHAPTER 4 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................... 57

4.1. Introduction .....................................................................................................57

4.2. My goals and results .......................................................................................57

4.3. Pros and cons of the study...............................................................................58

4.4. Suggestions for future research .......................................................................60

1.2. Soulslike games1

1.3. What Elden Ring is2

Picture 3: Varré speaking to the player (edited, original image credit:

Picture 5: Limgrave (credit: eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com).

White Mask Varré

Picture 6: First meeting with Varré in Limgrave (edited,

Picture 7: Path suggested by Varré (edited, original image credit:

1.5. The language of Elden Ring

An interesting aspect of Elden Ring is its language. It partly sounds old-fashioned –

Each character’s linguistic peculiarities are motivated by their background, personal

BACKGROUND AND METHOD

Next, I consulted GalileoDiscovery, the online library catalogue of the University of

2.3.1. Data collection

Picture 8: Partial screenshot of some of the text material

Picture 9: Exemplification of a character’s speech as

Example (1), about Iron Fist Alexander:

Hello-o? Can you hear me?

Picture 10: First meeting with Iron Fist Alexander (credit:

Picture 11: Gideon Ofnir while busy studying, an activity which he