Applied Linguistics in Sport

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Applied Linguistics in Sport  

Convenors:

 

The study of sport is growing exponentially, but it still remains largely overlooked as a site of scholarly analysis and public scrutiny because it has so often been dismissed as ‘just sport’ and merely ‘entertainment’ without recognition of how pervasive, influential and embedded sport is across multiple levels of culture and society. There is a general failure to recognise the power of sport and the extent to which understandings arising from sport impact wider society. This influence is not just in the obvious and explicit forms of sport but also in the prominent discourses of sport and the intersected and interconnected discourses constructed within and through sport. We need to explore and analyse the discursive and rhetorical processes and content of talk, interaction and meaning-making in sport, of sport, about sport and using sport. - (Meân 2016, ix)

The scope of this ReN – Applied Linguistics in Sport – broadly covers research involving the application of linguistics to the field of sport.  In response to Meân’s ‘call to arms’, the ReN aims at bringing together a burgeoning body of sports and language research into the one research network.   As its starting point, the ReN draws on recent collaborative publications (Lavric et al. 2008; Caldwell et al. 2016; Callies & Levin 2019; Callies et al. in prep.), workshops (e.g. International Workshop on Sports Communication, Siegen 2017; AILA symposium “Sports Discourse and Digital Technology: Innovations, Applications and Implications in Data and Method” 2021, IPra workshop “The language and discourses of football - Pragmatic perspectives” 2021) and colloquiums (British Association for Applied Linguistics Conference, University of Warwick, UK, 2014, European Systemic Functional Linguistic Conference, Salzburg 2016; Salamanca 2017) between international scholars with a common interest in sport and linguistics.  The ReN is also open to a range of linguistic methods, theories and traditions (e.g. sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, conversation analysis, systemic functional linguistics, interactional linguistics, critical discourse studies, multimodal social semiotics, ), a range of sporting contexts (e.g. different types of sports, sports media, coaching, on-field language, sports analytics), and cross-disciplinary research more generally (e.g. sports communication, sports psychology, sports science and e-sports).  In short, the scope of the ReN is not limited only to applied linguistics in the field of sport.  The ReN includes established and emerging researchers from more than fifteen countries (see detailed list of members in the table below).  The ReN also aims to engage with a growing number of students working on sport-related topics and courses in their university qualifications.  In these terms, the network provides a platform for information, support and scholarship for both scholars and students with an interest in the application of linguistics to sport.