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This article examines how vocal performances of characters can contribute to sociocritical storytelling in video games. We argue that the vocal performances of video game characters–and in particular their accents–can "fill in" the fictional story worlds of video games through associations with real people and places. These associations allow video games to evoke such social themes as are connected with accent, including privilege, conflict, class, and ethnicity. So evoked, these themes can then be critically examined. We apply this perspective in a sociolinguistic analysis of Disco Elysium, an expansive role-playing game in which the characters' vocal performances come to support the player's sociomoral orientation in the game world. Finally, we discuss a result of our analysis that runs counter to previous scholarship, namely that vocal stereotyping can serve to enhance, rather than to undermine, the player's critical apprehension of game worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the evil voice in the horror film "The Exorcist" by William Friedkin. Topics include a description of the voice of the evil possessed adolescent girl in the film named Regan MacNeil, the experimental efforts of sound designer Ron Nagle and his team to find the right voice for possessed Regan, the application of the theory of conceptual metaphor to voices in popular fictions and the reason for the notoriety of the 1973 film adaptation of "The Exorcist."