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In Country with Tactical Iraqi: Trust, Identity, and Language Learning in a Military Video Game

This paper discusses Tactical Iraqi, a video game developed at the University of Southern California with funding from the U.S. military that is designed to accelerate a learner’s acquisition of spoken Arabic to assist in the rapid deployment of soldiers into volatile tactical situations. This paper analyzes three distinct aspects of the Tactical Iraqi mission game: how “trust” is constituted in both virtual and experimental worlds, how digital experiences of the “self” of language learning are constructed as complex amalgams of “identity,” “role,” “subjectivity,” and “voice,” and how sometimes problematic ideologies of language learning and literacy inform the design philosophy of the game.