This course provided an overview of qualitative data collection and analysis methods in linguistics, focusing on case study, discourse analysis, interview, survey, and integrated methods. Emphasis was placed on: 1) understanding how studies are designed to respond to specific research questions, including how questions are derived from prior theory and research; 2) how validity is assessed, including what counts as evidence, what makes data analysis systematic, and what makes a study trustworthy; and 3) how quantitative and qualitative methods compare with and compliment one another. We learned about prominent qualitative research methodologies and critically analyzed research reports employing those same methodologies.
Based on a small rabbit hole I fell into while researching our presentation, I was allowed to make an alternative final assignment comparing terms across different disciplines.
A Preliminary Compare and Contrast Report
Digital Game Learning in Linguistics and Ludology
Dailenn Thieme
LIACS, LUCL Leiden University
5194KLC03: Qualitative Methods in Linguistics
Dr. J.V. Jeffery
24 December, 2025
Interdisciplinary research integrates knowledge, perspectives and insights across different disciplines. It differs from multidisciplinary in that the disciplines are not working alongside each other, but actively collaborating and integrating, and from transdisciplinary, where academic and non-academic fields partner to solve complex questions (Slot, n.d.). Interdisciplinary research and collaboration are important because it provides access to developing new knowledge and solving complex problems by combing skills perspectives from multiple disciplines (Aboelela et al., 2007).
Differences across disciplines are not limited to methods, and interdisciplinary collaboration should therefore not be limited to combining methods and methodology. Taguchi & Bodén (2025) state that lexica can also differ widely across disciplines, especially implicit assumptions and connotations. For example, “In the field concerned with inquiry on, to, for, with, or by young children, the divide between pedagogy and psychology has caused a split in how nouns such as subject, individual, self, consciousness, mind, normal, deviation, power, and position, for example, are defined” (p.241). They argue that interdisciplinary research should not assume vocabulary identicalness and be open to confront their own field’s limitations.
Clearly defining key terminology is very important in qualitative research, especially in an interdisciplinary context. to quote Macaro (2020) “the less highly defined the constructs or phenomena, the more different keywords will need to be used to get at them.” (p. 233). In this chapter, Macaro clearly shows that defining key concepts is important across different stages – when defining the problem but also when identifying the scope or, for example, when deciding to use a CDS approach to “first define what they mean by being critical.” However, it is possible that after establishing research or review questions and defining important terminology, a literature search shows that the terminology used “does not appear to match the terminology being used in the field”.
Establishing a framework is important, particularly in qualitative and applied linguistics research (see McKinley & Rose, 2020). Establishing a framework on badly defined terminology leads to weak frameworks, low transparency and bad reproducibility. However, what happens when the terminology across fields does not match? During my courses as a student, I came across similar concepts in two different fields, linguistics and ludology, that did not carry the same terminology.
This report aims to provide a preliminary analysis of this discrepancy in vocabulary between the disciplines of linguistics and ludology. When looking at these discrepancies, this paper will focus on education and language learning. We will therefore look in this preliminary analysis to three highly related concept relevant to education and language learning in video games:
[a] Games that are designed for entertainment
[b] Games that are designed with a primary purpose beyond entertainment, such as education
[c] The use of game design elements in a non-game context
In the field of linguistics, [a] games are usually involved with incidental language learning “unintentional/indirect learning of vocabulary while engaging in other language-related activities such as reading, listening or speaking” (Webb, 2020 as cited in Wu et al., 2025). [b] games are most often designed for foreign language learning. Concept [c] is also mostly applied in second language acquisition and relates to applications, for instance Memrise or Duolingo, which contain game design elements including leader boards and achievements, but these applications are generally not considered video games.
This paper will investigate and identify the terminology that is used in the two disciplines to describe these three concepts and analyse the commonalities and discrepancies. For clarity, all terms will be written with a capital letter.
Personal Bias
In a systematic review, it is essential to reduce bias that is inherent to other types of reviews as much as possible by adhering to a number of principles and procedures throughout the whole process (Macaro, 2020). This preliminary research is not a systematic review, as I do not review the content of the articles I gather, but rather use them as a dataset to analyse. However, to ensure full transparency, I will disclose my personal bias in this paragraph. The first academic encounter I had with the three concepts was in the article by Deterding et al. (2011), which suggest the common use of Serious Games and Gamification for concepts [b] and [c]. This influenced my own terminology usage for these concepts. Along with Serious Games and Gamification for [b] and [c]I usually use Off-the-shelf or Commercial Games to describe [a]. This might have influenced the literature search with a slight focus on familiar terms, although I tried to limit this unconscious bias. Before the writing of this report, I did not have a strong opinion on the use of other terminology, such as Game Based Learning, but I did, and still do believe that a centralised terminology is important and that there should be a clear distinction between the usage of different terms, especially within a single article. My search was initially centralised around Gamification, as that seemed to be the most centralised term.
Scope
Due to time and course constraints, this preliminary report focuses on the educational aspects of digital games and game elements. For a specific explanation as to what constitutes “game element”, see Deterding et al. (2011) but games and game elements includes game interface and interactivity, game design and game mechanics.
To gather articles, one usually defines key terms to search. However, the purpose of this preliminary report was to find terms we might not have established already. Therefore, I chose a slightly different approach. The starting point of this report were the following two papers: Deterding et al. (2011) on defining Gamification and Reinhardt & Sykes (2014) who defined the same concept in a learning environment as Game-Informed learning. An initial search provided very few results for Game-Informed compared to Gamification. It appeared that Gamification was a well-established term, even defined in dictionaries (Merriam-Webster, n.d.; Oxford University Press, n.d.). Therefore, I used Gamification as a starting point to find articles that use other related terms, looking for terms that encompass concepts [a] and [b]. Any new term that appeared was then added to the search key words.
Articles were included regardless of the degree to which differences between concepts were defined, as this gives us insight in how terms are used and if the usage seems consistent enough to not need to define them. Lastly, Chat GPT was asked to find any additional articles that use other terms for the concepts described as in [a], [b] and [C].
This resulted in one additional article that compares Ludification and Gamification. (Walther & Larson, 2022). However, Ludification is described as “the enhancement of specifically game elements in stories – works of linear fiction.” Because of our limitations I had to keep our scope small and decided not to include linear fiction as a research area, as it lacks interactivity. The article was still included as Gamification is within the scope.
Our article search resulted in eight articles in the field of linguistics and seven articles in the field of ludology. All articles with relevant terminology are presented in a table in the appendix.
Findings
Concept [a]: Games Designed for Entertainment
There is a lot less research into learning using games designed for entertainment in both fields. These are generally called Digital, Commercial or Off-the-shelf Games, or a combination of these terms for even more clarity. There is one linguistics article that establishes the term Game-Enhanced Learning to describe learning using these games (Reinhardt & Sykes, 2014) which is then referenced by another linguistics article (Wei et al., 2025). In our preliminary search, game enhanced learning is used rarely outside language contexts. De Freitas et al. (2013) refer to Game-Enhanced Learning as the use of Serious Games in a learning environment and relates it to Games-Based Learning. They do not consider Game-Enhanced Learning to refer to Commercial Games. To make matters complicated, Bustard et al. (2011) developed a tool to define and measure games in a learning context that they called GEL or Game-enhanced Learning. This is the name of their tool and not a term with a definition of either concept [a], [b], [c] or a subcategory.
To summarise, Concept [a] is generally called Digital, Commercial, or Off-the-shelf Games and there is not much deviation from these terms. They are also not often defined, as most consider it evident what they entail.
Concept [b]: Games Designed with a Primary Purpose Beyond Entertainment, such as Education
The two main terms applicable to concept [b] are Serious Games and Game-Based Learning (GBL). Other terms include Educational Games, Learning Games, and Edutainment. Edutainment is usually associated with video games, but also contains any kind of education that entertains (Susi et al., 2007). Educational Games and Learning Games are hardly used as concrete terms. Serious Games and Game-Based Learning are not always considered interchangeable, although they are often used interchangeably. Most often, these terms are considered related to each other but clear definitions are not always provided.
Their relationship to each other is not consistently across domains, not withing domains. There seems to be no clear definition on either Serious Games or GBL, and often they are not defined within the article nor cited to an article that provides a definition. However, oftentimes when they are defined, one of them is defined as a subcategory of the other. Within the field of linguistics, Sørenson & Meyer (2007) and Wu et al. (2025) classified GBL as a subcategory of Serious Games but they do not expand on what GBL entails. In the field of Ludology, Susi et al. (2007) specifies that GBL is a branch of Serious Games that has defined learning outcomes. Contrary, Subhash & Cudney (2018) and Schrader (2022) define Serious Games as a subcategory of GBL. Both of these articles do not specify what the differentiation is between the main category and the subcategory or the boundaries of the subcategory.
A few sources do differentiate between the two terms. Chowdhury et al. (2024) from the field of linguistics defines GBL as the activity of learning through play, while Serious Games are designed with a specific learning objective while often pushing gaming elements to the background. Schrader (2022), although classifying Serious Games as a subcategory of GBL, implies that GBL is the approach that uses Serious Games. It appears as though, if there is a clear differentiation, often this relates to the activity of GBL, with the item Serious Games. Keep in mind, not all sources see GBL as an activity, Sadigzade (2025) describes GBL as the immersive and interactive environment in which one can practice language.
Most interestingly, Subhash & Cudney (2018) define Serious Games as a form of GBL, but state that both GBL and Serious games fall under Gamified Learning. This is not supported by any other source included in this report.
Concept [c]: The Use of Game Design Elements in a Non-Game Context
Gamified Learning is often used in the field of linguistics and also occasionally in the field of ludology. Usually, Gamified Learning, Applications, Environment or Systems are used synonymous with Gamification. Generally, when a differentiation is made between, for example, applications or environments, Gamified Applications can be clearer than stating gamification, which can encompass all non-game contexts. Gamification is a relatively well-established term, especially compared to the terms for concept [b]. Deterding et al (2011) was highly influential in centralising this term and is often cited by both sources from linguistics and ludology. Deterding et al., mentioned parallel terms that were used when they proposed the central term Gamification, including Productivity Games, Surveillance Entertainment, Funware, Playful Design, Behavioural Games, Game Layer, and Applied Gaming. Our sample size might be slightly skewed, as we initially took the keyword Gamification as our starting point, but also when using keywords such as Game-Based Learning, Gamification is often the term used to describe concept [c]. The only discrepancy is Reinhardt & Sykes (2014), who proposed Game-Informed instead of Gamification. They acknowledge the term Gamification, therefore I believe they propose Game-Informed as a centralised term to be more consistent with their other proposed centralised terms, as they propose to further on use Game-Enhanced to describe concept [a] and Game-Based to describe concept [b]. The problem with this proposal is that they do not acknowledge the term Serious Games and the widespread use of Gamification. If the field of linguistics starts to centrally use a term for established concepts, I would propose that they use the same terms as the field of ludology. As mentioned in the introduction, discrepancies between terminology are not beneficial for either party.
A few sources refer to gamefulness as a part of Gamification. However, gamefulness is not a term that is defined by one of our concepts but rather a phenomenon that, combined with gameful interaction and gameful design encompass Gamification. Gamefulness is considered complimentary to playfulness (Deterding et al., 2011).
Discussion
It is clear from my preliminary research that concept [a], games that are designed for entertainment and concept [c], the use of game design elements in a non-game context, are not source of discrepancy between nor withing the fields of linguistics and ludology. Concept [a] does not necessarily have one centrally defined term, but there is no contesting what the terms Commercial or Off-the-shelf Games mean. The only possible caveat is that when people use the umbrella term Digital Game, this often refers to Commercial Games but might as well refer to Serious Games or any other, even to Gamification albeit less often.
The clear point of contention, both within and across fields is concept [b]. Serious Games and Game-Based Learning are both often used within a learning context, and often not well defined within an article or paper. A lack of explicit definition or differentiation implies that the authors assume a shared understanding with the audience, that the concepts and differentiation is already known. However, as these terms are often used interchangeable and have differing definitions, this should not be assumed. The changeability of definitions suggest that different authors have different focal points, some focus more on the differentiation between the item and the action, others on the end-goal. This means that the terms are heavily context dependent instead of centralised. the varying use of subcategories also supports this; conceptual boundaries are not clearly set but are used flexibly.
There was no large discrepancy between the use of terms in linguistics and ludology. I expected sources from the field of linguistics to use GBL more, and sources from ludology Serious Games, as this was the case of my first encounter in both fields, but that did not provide substantiable. A different focus point, one on the experience and one on the game itself for example, was not present in my analysis.
There are a few methodological implications based on my findings. A substantial number of articles did not provide clear definitions nor cited a source where the reader could find a clear definition. This would not be problematic if my analysis showed consistent terminology use across and within fields, but that was not the case. Sources that do provide definitions are therefore more transparent, easier to interpret and more trustworthy. A lack of definitions also limits comparability between studies. In qualitative research, where concepts guide data selection, analysis and interpretation, unclear and inconsistent terminology might have serious effects. Moreover, in methods such as interviews, non-defined terms provide ambiguity. As McKinley & Rose (2025) make evident in their book by consistently emphasising definitions across chapters, terms that are not naturally unambiguous, must be explicitly defined for proper research.
Explicitly defining terms is even more important in interdisciplinary research. As mentioned in the introduction, underlying assumptions and connotations to terms can differ across disciplines, and ambiguous terminology gives even a higher possibility of miscommunication. I highly recommend acknowledging any ambiguity and explicitly defining the definitions of terms for every research study. Terminology should not be treated as a given nor as an embarrassment when improperly centrally defined but rather as an object of inquiry. Similar to personal biases, ambiguous terminology should be considered from conception to the finished product.
Lastly, to revisit my biases, I do not claim to be fully neutral in my report. I have attempted to remain as neutral as possible, but the more I investigated and wrote about these concepts and their terminology, the more I would support a centralising paper that clearly defines what each term ought to define. Of course, such a paper would have to reach the whole field, but Deterding et al. (2011) made a lot of progress for concept [c], and this could also be applied to concept [b]. I support the idea that GBL should be more focused on the action while Serious Games should be the item that this action uses. This bias might be present in my report. I also acknowledge that a different starting point, not starting from the term Gamification, could yield different results.
Limitations and future research
This is a preliminary report, which means that the scope is not highly defined and the corpus is small. A full report would need a better-defined scope and a larger dataset to be able to accurately draw any conclusions. Furthermore, the scope with a focus on education might have excluded terms that are used frequently in similar contexts outside educational settings. Lastly, this analysis is mostly based on definitions provided in sources. Due to the ambiguity of concept [b], I mostly focused on the sources that provided a clear definition, as this highlighted the discrepancies and ambiguity. I recommend future research to expand their focus, not only to definitions and general context, but to analyse sources in more detail to find implicit definitions and contextual use as well.
Conclusion
I did a preliminary analysis for three concepts related to education using digital games and digital game elements. The concepts are as follows:
[a] Games that are designed for entertainment
[b] Games that are designed with a primary purpose beyond entertainment, such as education
[c] The use of game design elements in a non-game context
The analysis revealed that common terms for concept [a] include Digital, Commercial, or Off-the-shelf Games and these terms are generally clear, the only caveat is that Digital Games is mostly used as an umbrella term and can include concept [b] as well. The two main terms for concept [b] include Serious Games and Game-Based Learning. These terms are often used interchangeably and sometimes not defined clearly, even though a differentiation is made. Explicit definitions from conception to finished product is important in qualitative studies. As for concept [c], Gamification is the most common used term, with gamified (area) used for specific areas of gamification. Establishing a clear definition for all terms across fields to support interdisciplinary research is a challenge. Therefore, I suggest that, for now, researchers explicitly state the definitions they adhere to when using ambiguous terminology.
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