![]() originates from the streaming website created in 2007. Lastly, we shall look at these signs’ indexicality and how they tie together. Next, we shall take three signs found in the chat channels of three different Twitch streams and look in depth at how each sign is situated in its own ‘space’. In order to do this, we shall first take a closer look at the overarching ‘place’ that allows this streaming interaction to happen:, by far the largest streaming site for gaming-related content. This paper aims to look at the ‘linguistic landscape’ that are these chat channels, to determine how they function, what kind of signs are used, who uses them, and why. The public place where all these multinational communities interact and place their semiotic signs can be called a ‘linguistic landscape’ (Blommaert, 2013). These communities consist of people with all sorts of different nationalities and native languages. With the most popular streamers having up to 30.000 viewers a day, these chat channels are nothing short of communities the size of small cities. Every stream has its own chat channel that allows this interaction to happen. In contrast to watching TV, watching a stream is more often than not a very social act, as there is live interaction with the content being watched, namely with the streamer, and the rest of the audience. Hundreds of millions of people tune in each month to watch these streams. For a lot of young gamers, watching a ‘streamer’ play a game is the equivalent of watching TV for non-gamers. Streaming refers to the act of playing a game while streaming said gameplay live on the internet. In many ways streaming is the prime example that the old stigma of 'socially inept loner' for gamers was wrong. As the popularity of gaming continues to grow, new phenomena tying in with this behaviour flourish. ![]() In fact, the results of the survey go on to show that gamers actually lead more social lives than non-gamers, indicating that the days of the 'guy living in his parents’ basement' seem to be over. Add to that 62% of Generation Xers, and even the Baby Boomers picking up a game, with a little over 40% playing in the past 60 days and it's easy to see that gaming has become very commonplace. According to a survey taken in 2014 by LifeCourse, around 73% of Millennials played a video game in the 60 days before taking the survey. However, this stigma has changed in recent years. Gaming used to be reserved for 'nerds', 'socially inept loners' and the 'guy living in his parents’ basement'. This paper analyses three of these emotes as signs found in the vast linguistic landscape of Twitch’s livestream chats. The interaction between Twitch users in chat channels, many of which can easily contain tens of thousands of viewers, is often accompanied by so-called ‘emotes’. is the main place for watching these livestreams, as well as for interacting with streamers or other viewers. Watching livestreams of games is becoming an ever more common practice.
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