The world cup, football-speak and national identity

NTU linguist Dean Hardman reflects on the status of 'football talk' in anticipation of this years World Cup.


When the football world cup comes around once every four years, it seems like the nation is gripped by World Cup Fever. Not only is there wall-to-wall coverage of the actual matches; extra television programmes devoted to talking about the matches are aired, while football permeates every other televisual and media genre. Football, already the advertising vehicle of choice for a whole range of brands and products, is used to promote everything from soft drinks to washing powder, from credit cards to chocolate. There doesn’t seem to be a product or service whose brand managers don’t see the world cup as a prime opportunity to increase brand awareness.

Clearly these advertisers are drawing upon the high level of interest that the world cup generates among otherwise casual viewers of the game. Everyone during a World Cup, especially but not exclusively when a home nation is involved, has an opinion on football. These range from the team and game-specific: “Rooney’s injury holds the key, they’ve got to play 4-4-2”, to the more general: “England have got no chance”, and from the positive: “I’m so excited about tonight’s game”, to the negative: “I can’t believe they’ve cancelled Eastenders for this.” Whether the speaker or writer has any specialist knowledge or not, or whether their opinion or comment is positive or negative doesn’t really matter: all this shared focus on football and talking about the world cup helps to reinforce social identities and helps us to construct a shared sense of group identity. Ultimately this might be a shared sense of Englishness that talking about the England team creates. However, it might just as easily be a shared sense of Scottishness when talking about a strong desire to see England fail, or a shared anti-football agenda.

Casual viewers also begin to draw upon the footballing lexicon for the first time in four years. “Beating the offside trap” is inserted awkwardly into sentences, alongside the notion of “hitting a barn door with a banjo” or “making an impression early doors” as “squeaky bum time approaches”. The Ivory coast might need to “shut up shop”, while everyone wants to know who will survive the “group of death”. Again, having a shared national footballing lexicon to delve into also helps to oil the wheels of communication and reinforces a sense of national togetherness and cohesion.

Whatever one’s feelings are towards the world cup, it is absolutely unavoidable. It is going to be all but impossible to spend the month of June in the UK without being bombarded with images of footballers selling ice-creams, or hearing colleagues speak, sometimes inarticulately, about events in South Africa. At the same time, though, for one month only, talking about football becomes a key way in which vast swathes of the population signify membership of a whole range of social groupings and identities. For a limited time only you need never be stuck for something to say, it’s the event that we can all feel part of.

(Image: mrfrogger; permissions)

Conference Report: Language and (New) Media

Dean Hardman reports back from The Language and New (Media) Conference that took place at the University of Washington in Seattle between the 3rd and 5th of September.

This was the third conference in a series that has examined the role of the media in relation to the construction or representation of language, with the two previous incarnations taking place in Leeds in 2005 and 2007. While those conferences were built around themes of ideology in relation to how the media represented, constructed and produced language, this conference purported to take a step further and invited delegates to look more closely at the roles that new technologies and ideologies associated with new media play in the construction and representation of language.

As it turned out, the papers presented were an eclectic mix of studies and theories that discussed not only the discourses of blogs, wikis, texting, instant messaging, internet art, video games, virtual worlds, websites, emails, podcasting, hypertext fiction and graphical user interfaces, but also how these discourses affect the world in which we live and how new technologies have changed the ways in which we communicate and live our lives.

In general terms, the conference showed that the analysis of media discourse has well and truly embraced the electronic age, with a number of papers examining the role that social networking websites play in people’s lives and, by extension, how the language of these new genres has developed alongside the development of new technologies. Indeed, this was the thrust of one of the plenary speakers’ presentations, Jannis Androutsopoulos of Kings College London, who discussed computer mediated communication (CMC) and how processes of multimodality, intertextuality and heteroglossia can be used to describe and explain the generic features of web 2.0 sites such as Facebook and Myspace.

Another interesting plenary talk was given by Naomi Baron (American University) who focused upon how mobile phone use has reshaped social encounters. She presented data from a study involving university students from the USA, Japan, Italy, Sweden and Korea, which described how use of mobile phones has resulted in people feeling as though they have lost control of social encounters.

Clearly it is impossible in a blog entry such as this to discuss all of the 60 papers presented, but one other session that was particularly worthwhile was the special panel on the BBC voices project. Bethan Davies (University of Leeds) talked about how the BBC’s voices season had sought to utilise the internet to “stimulate a national conversation about language use in the UK”. She discussed how users had submitted their thoughts about their own languages, accents and dialects, and described some of the limitations of the project, such as the selection of specific languages and the availability of discussion forums. The paper offered evidence of a new way of examining accents and dialects as well as attitudes towards them through CMC.

(photo credit: kendrya, permissions)

Crafty Magician or Bad Accountant? Identity and Ideology in British Newspaper Discourse

Dean Hardman offers an outline of his paper for the conference on Language in the (New) Media: Technologies and Ideologies that is about to take place at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Newspaper editorials perform a special role within the pages of the press, as they, unlike other news texts, are openly persuasive and there is usually less emphasis on objectivity (Lee and Lin, 2006). They represent the participation of the newspaper in public debate (Le, 2003) and are sites where ideological stances can often be found (Hackett and Zhao, 1994). This paper examines a selection of British newspaper editorials that focus upon British politicians and British party politics, in order to examine the relationship between the newspaper, its readers (idealised or otherwise) and the political parties and politicians represented.

The paper forms part of a wider study into how the ways in which newspapers construct identities for individual politicians can reflect political ideology, and utilises an analytical method which combines the approaches of critical discourse analysis with the concepts of performed identities and communities of practice. The study highlights how, by constructing identities for politicians, newspapers reveal their own political identities that are closely aligned to political parties, while simultaneously encouraging readers to conceptualise events in such a way that serves the ideology in question.

In this paper, editorials about financial policy from four British newspapers (The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror) are examined in detail. The paper highlights both the ways in which newspapers construct identities for politicians, alongside the effects of doing so - how this serves to construct identities for the newspapers themselves and orients readers towards sharing a particular point of view.

The paper will identify the role of metaphors, modality and other linguistic markers of stance in identity construction, and will compare and contrast the ways in which broadsheets and tabloids and the left and right-wing press orientate towards politicians and encode political ideologies.

(Photo credit: floongle. Permissions.)

9:58 - Why Usain Bolt Matters

Dean Hardman discusses what Usain Bolt's 9:58 in Berlin means for athletics.

The sport of track and field athletics has meant a lot to me for as long as I can remember. I just about recall as a four year-old running in the pre-school race at my primary school’s annual sports day – my mother tells me that I did shuttle runs in the back garden as a “warm-up” for the event – and throughout my teenage years I could be found spending evenings and weekends running around (or, more often, sitting besides) a local track. For me, it has always been the purest of sporting endeavours – people simply pitting themselves against others using nothing but their own bodies to propel themselves or simple implements faster, further or higher. It’s democratic, too. You don’t need lots of fancy equipment; you just need determination and somewhere to run, so the poorest in society can compete against the richest. It’s one of only a handful of sports where women’s events share the spotlight with the men’s and the geographical spread of participating nations means that countries as diverse as the USA and Ethiopia, Namibia and Japan have had success on the global stage in recent years. It should then, be the most popular sport in the world, after the all-conquering football.

But it isn’t. And the reason it isn’t, is because of performance enhancing drugs. Not so long ago, the television viewing figures for athletics in Britain were fantastic, as millions of people (in pre multi-channel days) tuned in to see the exploits of the likes of Seb Coe, Steve Ovett, Steve Cram, Daley Thompson, Tessa Sanderson and Linford Christe. The Seoul Olympics in 1988 were a turning point. Ben Johnson, the Canadian winner of the 100m was found to have taken anabolic steroids and over the subsequent 20 years the sport has found itself embroiled in drugs scandal after drugs scandal. Media coverage and interest ceased to focus upon performances – by the middle of this decade the back pages of newspapers barely mentioned athletics results, let alone reports of meetings – and instead devoted space to track and field only when the likes of Dwain Chambers, Marian Jones and Justin Gatlin had found themselves in disgrace. The sport, up until recently, had become the preserve of the aficionados only. Nobody else seemed interested.

That is why Usain Bolt is so important. His recent world record of 9.58s, accompanied by his Beijing Olympic records in the 100m and 200m completely obliterated Ben Johnson’s drug fuelled times of the 1980s and have made athletics front and back page news for the right reasons once again. Globally, media coverage has shifted from the ultra negative to, as Colin Jackson might say, the 'super positive'. Bolt has become the poster boy for the sport, a global icon to match and maybe even supersede the likes of Roger Federer and Tiger Woods. His exuberant behaviour and incredible athletic feats make him, and the sport, something that people want to see, and through him the sport can hopefully recover a place in the sporting public’s affections through increased positive media coverage. Most importantly, his precocious performances as a 16 year-old make his performances believable for the media and the viewing public, and that should help to restore a once great sport to what would be, in my opinion, its rightful place.
(Photo credit: www.ALT3.tk. Permissions)

Fair game?

Dean Hardman questions the relationship between public funding for sport and the reaction in the British press to the performance of UK players at Wimbledon who have 'failed' to live up to Andy Murray.

If you witnessed much of the British media reaction to the first round of Wimbledon last week, like me, you probably weren’t too surprised at some of the comments aimed at Britain’s tennis players, as they ‘crashed out’ of the tournament. They were invariably described as a national disgrace, as pathetic and, most tellingly, as a waste of public money and funding.

Alex Bogdanovic seemed to be the most harshly criticized, described by the Mirror as ‘serial loser Alex Bogdanovic’, with the opening to its news report of the first round pretty much summing up its stance, and that of the media as a whole:

‘King of the bottlers Alex Bogdanovic became Wimbledon's biggest all-time loser as the Brits equaled their worst wipe-out in history.
On a day of crying shame which left the Union Jack at half-mast, Anne Keothavong broke down in tears after her shock defeat by Patricia Mayr as the strawberry fields of SW19 became a showcase for Britain's Rot Talent.’ (Mirror)

I think that it’s pretty safe to assume that the British media, especially the tabloid press, have always been committed to a nationalist ideology, and that the fortunes of British players have always been a subject of fierce debate. However, I wonder whether the collective sense of shame that we are encouraged to feel, and the sense of outrage that is palpable, is partly to do with the level of public funding that tennis (and most other sports) receives.

There seems to be a growing sense that sportsmen and women should be accountable to the public and, when they fail to live up to the expectations that are partly created by an increase in funding, they should expect similar treatment to MPs who have built duck ponds and had moats cleaned – strong criticism for having wasted ‘our’ money.

Sports like tennis and athletics used to be individual endeavors in which athletes competed primarily for themselves. If ‘we’, as the media and public, wanted to share in any success or commiserate in failure, then great, but I don’t feel that there was the same sense of outright hostility towards athletes who performed to below expectations. The questions are whether this hostility and level accountability is fair and whether it is indeed related to the level of public funding directed towards sport.
(Photo credit: E01. Permissions.)

And the Winner is....

When we started blogging about linguistics lecturer and fellow CS@NT blogger Dean Hardman's journey into the world of comedy writing we never really expected it to go on this long. But exceeding all expectations (especially his own), Dean, with his script From Riga to Rotherham, WON The Sitcom Trials, the national search for new comedy writers.

The Sitcom Trials: the final

Anyone following the blog will know that we've been slightly obsessed with the tale of linguistics lecturer Dean Hardman's rebirth as a comedy genius. His script for From Riga to Rotherham is now in the finals of The Sitcom Trials, a national competition to find new comedy scriptwriting talent. The finals take place tomorrow and Dean's work faces a pretty star-studded panel of judges:Lucy Lumsden (Head of Comedy for BBC TV), Andrew Newman (Head of Entertainment, Channel 4) and Jane Berthoud (Head of Comedy Commissioning, BBC Radio). We, of course, wish him the best of luck (but are now beginning to worry that he might eventually leave us to hang out in some glamorous clique of celebrity Mancunian comedians somewhere in Prestwich).

Swedophilia

Over Easter Dean Hardman had the pleasure of going on a teaching exchange to the Media and Communication department at Karlstad University in Sweden.

The 'exchange' (I visited Karlstad, nobody came the other way on this occasion) was funded by the Erasmus Lifelong Learning programme, whose mission is to encourage collaboration and exchange of ideas between member institutions across Europe. I instigated the exchange myself, as I saw it as a fantastic opportunity to visit another country and experience a different culture, both academic and otherwise, and agreed to give a paper at the department’s 'Higher Seminar' – a research seminar series open to academic staff and postgraduate students.

The trip started, however, with 24 hours in Stockholm – a city that I hadn’t visited before and which I immediately fell for. Built upon a series of islands, walking around allowed me to fully understand how it earned its nickname of 'the Venice of the North'. Wherever you are in the city, you’re never far from a glorious expanse of water. After visiting a number of museums (including the extremely impressive Vasa Museum), I boarded a train to Karlstad. After a three hour journey past what seemed like the majority of Sweden’s 100,000 lakes, I arrived in Karlstad, a city on the northern shore of the enormous lake Vänern.

Karlstad is a small city of 100,000 inhabitants, and is known in Sweden for its long hours of sunshine, something I was fortunate enough to experience. With its very wide streets and pleasant main square, the city was a great place to stay for a few days. The university is situated to the north east, a 10 minute bus ride away and is one of Sweden’s newest universities. My seminar seemed to go down with the assembled group of academics about as well as an hour long paper can do when presented at the back end of the Easter break. It had the title 'Political Ideology and Identity in British Newspaper Editorials: Critical Discourse Analysis and Communities of Practice', and I discussed how newspapers construct identities for their political subjects and how this, in turn, can help to construct an identity for the newspaper itself. I also discussed how I see newspapers constructing artificial in-groups that are constructed through synthetic mutual engagement with their readers.

With my seminar delivered, questions answered and meetings concluded, I also had the fortune of meeting Stefan Holm, the 2004 Olympic high Jump champion and now an employee of Karlstad University. As well as talking at great length about his athletics career, we also touched upon the nature of celebrity, as he showed me the morning’s regional newspapers, where he made the front page of one and had a double page spread in another – all because he’s taken part in a small game of football with his cousin’s Sunday league team. Swedish TV also covered the 'event'! All in all, a very worthwhile trip and one that confirmed my suspicions: I’m very much a Swedophile.
(Photo credit: Ruminatrix. Permissions.)

The Sitcom Trials

We’d like to break with our normal (relatively) academic focus to say ‘good luck’ to Dean Hardman, a member of our research group and lecturer in linguistics. It turns out that Dean is ‘a bit of a comedian’ (although this is usually used as an insult hurled at unsuccessful criminals by middle-aged cops on dramas like Ashes to Ashes).

Last summer in an idle moment after completing his PhD, Dean decided to enter a competition called The Sitcom Trials. With an established pedigree and operating as a showcase for new comedy writing talent, The Sitcom Trials invited aspiring comedy writers to submit a treatment for a sitcom. This call produced over 500 entries. Then 32 fifteen-minute scripts were selected to be performed live at the Leicester Square Theatre, London. Dean was one of the 32 writers selected.

Dean’s treatment for his script – From Riga to Rotherham – tells us that it ‘follows the fortunes of immigrants Marian, a Latvian who has moved to Britain to realise his dream of competing at the Olympic games, and Patience, a Nigerian hair stylist who wants to be closer to her family who have already settled in the UK. They find themselves living in shared accommodation with Jay, a British man who makes ends meet by working in the local tourist office. We see the social quirks and oddities of Britain through their eyes. In this first episode, Patience and Marian arrive in Rotherham before Patience discovers that her mother is to visit and that she needs a boyfriend-and fast. Is there anyone who could take on the role?’

To be honest, we were fairly surprised that Dean achieved this much in his first attempt at comedy writing (we are, at heart, a fairly cynical bunch). We knew he was funny but…. We were a little more surprised when he came into work on 5th March saying that his sit-com had been performed the previous night, that he’d won his heat and that his script had been received enthusiastically by professionals from the broadcasting industry.

Tomorrow night, From Riga to Rotherham features in the quarter finals of the competition. We wish him the best of luck from the cultural studies team (although we are increasingly believing that he might not even need luck). We'll keep you updated on his progress but you'll be able to find out more quickly here.

Media Anaysis, Media Production and Irate Users

What motivates us to analyse the media? By Dean Hardman.

As analysts of the mass media in general or of media discourse in particular, why do we do it? It’s likely that reasons can vary from person to person and that we all have our own. Chief of these, I suspect, is an innate curiosity and fascination with culture – a particular personal interest in film or television and their effects on people’s lives, for example. In my case, there are two main motivations. The first is outrage that I’ve often felt at ideologically loaded and biased reporting that I’ve seen in newspapers and television, the control or hold they seem to think they have (and do have) and a feeling that by pointing these out in a scholarly fashion, that the world will be, somehow, better. This is almost certainly very naïve.

The second is just mere fascination, and it is that fascination that has led me recently to dip my toe into the water of media production and to actually have a go at participating in the media. One relatively recent phenomenon in electronic mass media is 'user generated content' and 'interactivity'. Many media professionals – the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, for example – rage about the inane nature of user contributions, yet it seems to be the latest fad, with all national newspaper websites enabling readers to leave their thoughts in blogs (not unlike this one). Such user generated content is encouraged (or at least allowable) on the football website 'Football 365'. Here - and here - are two examples of my own contributions to the site, along with 'user comments'. These range from interesting thoughts on the issues raised in the pieces, to inane observations written by people who don’t appear to have even read the articles in question. Best of all, are the foul-mouthed aggressive responses, railing against the inanity of the articles themselves. Any thoughts about why people are motivated to abuse 'journalists' or bloggers are welcome in the comments section at the end of this blog.

My final excursion into the media production game comes in the form of a short sitcom script I entered into a competition called the Sitcom Trials. The play, 'From Riga to Rotherham' deals with issues of immigration and displacement, although suggesting that it is in any way more cerebral than that would be stretching things considerably. If you’re around the Leicester Square Theatre on Wednesday the 4th March, do pop in – although perhaps leave the 'interactivity' until after the show.

(Picture source: ario j's photostream)