Abstract
This article explores the discursive behaviour of professional male team sports players in post-match interviews from a social identity construction perspective. Drawing on a data set of 160 televised post-match interviews from two different team sports and two different regions of the world, this article identifies stances players orient to when presenting themselves in these media interviews. A supplementary data set of ethnographic semi-structured interviews with professional team sports players is also used to develop insider perspectives on the discursive behaviour of professional team sports players when speaking to the media. What is argued is that the acts and stances employed by team sports players can be interpreted as indexing a media self, or media identity, one that professional team sports players construct in order to strategically negotiate a public version of self that presents them positively to their audience and maintains their relationships with other members of their team.
Introduction
In their everyday interactions, people construct themselves in a range of social guises, including institutional (i.e. academic, boss, teacher) and personal (i.e. mother, sister, friend, New Zealander) guises. In this process, people draw on and orient to social knowledge associated with how these identity categories such as mother, academic or boss typically behave (or do not behave) in order to index or lay claim to a particular identity in interaction. For social constructionists, evidence of this knowledge can be identified in language use through analysis of the acts and stances speakers adopt in their interactions with others (Ochs, 1993: 288). Using linguistic evidence, social constructionists and discourse analysts can develop a ‘bottom-up’ picture of the social knowledge that underpins a given social identity.
For some, media interactions are a part of daily life. Because media interactions involve a wider audience bringing greater scrutiny of the person on show, the presentation of self in the media can be particularly ‘high stakes’. As a result, speakers may think about, plan and act strategically regarding the presentation of self as they attempt to negotiate the ‘communicative climate’ in which they are interacting (Ytreberg, 2013: 347). Such strategic action may involve, for example, playing safe, orienting to a particular audience, adopting a discursive tone associated with a particular role, or choosing to construct more personal aspects of identity for the public audience. Theoretically, then, the social practices of those speaking in media interactions, that is the stances and acts speakers orient to, could be seen to index a media self – a version of self that might lead to a favourable interpretation by a targeted audience.
This article contextualises this hypothesis by examining the social identity construction of professional team sports players in post-match media interview interactions. Sports players are one group of people that need to present themselves ritually in media interactions. Drawing on discourse data from 160 televised post-match interviews from two different team sports and two different regions of the world, I explore the discursive behaviour of professional male team sports players and examine what can be claimed about how these sports players appear to construct themselves in the media. Insights from ethnographic semi-structured interviews with professional team sports players are also employed to elicit insider perspectives on issues and strategic goals in relation to the presentation of self in the sports media.
I argue that the acts and stances employed by team sports players can be interpreted as indexing a media self, or media identity, one that professional team sports players construct in order to strategically negotiate a public version of self that presents them positively to their audience and maintains their relationships with other members of their team.
Literature review
Exploring the discourse of sports and sports players
The discourse of sport and sports players as a social group is starting to attract interest from researchers in linguistics and allied fields (Beard, 1998; Bernstein and Blain, 2002; Blain, 2002; Chovanec, 2005, 2008; Clark, 2011; Dreyfus and Jones, 2010; Lines, 2001). A thread of this research has explored sports registers and genres (Bruce, 2004; Caldwell, 2009; Chovanec, 2009; Ferguson, 1983; File, 2012, 2013; Ghadessy, 1988; Kuiper and Lewis, 2013; Lewandowski, 2012; Montgomery, 2010; Perez-Sabater et al., 2008; Reaser, 2003). The bulk of these studies have focused attention on the forms and functions of language used by sports players and media representatives (i.e. interviewers, journalists) in media contexts, suggesting a particular interest by scholars in the sports–media nexus.
Issues relating to the way sports players construct their identities in the media have, however, been under-examined. Studies of identity construction have been conducted on sports teams and players. Wilson (2009, 2011) carried out a detailed ethnographic study of an amateur rugby team in which he explored the linguistic construction and negotiation of identities in the interactions of the team. Using a Communities of Practice framework, Wilson (2011) provided empirical evidence of how team identities and leadership identities were particularly relevant in this context and emerged through the linguistic practices of the group. Ritual and formulaic linguistic routines performed a key role in identity construction in this context, and were sites where team identity could be constructed and where leaders could perform key leadership responsibilities such as motivating the team.
Wilson’s work, like many ethnographic studies, provides an insider glimpse into the discursive construction of identity as it is enacted in private, team-oriented interactions in amateur sporting contexts. For professional sports players, however, public interactions are also a reality and deserve consideration in relation to identity construction. Professional sports players are increasingly required to speak to fans in public spaces, mingle with sponsors at networking events and communicate in ritual mass media formats. When interacting in these public spheres, players may need to take strategic action to construct self in ways considered appropriate to the context at hand.
The (strategic) construction of self in the media
The strategic construction of self in the media has been directly and indirectly explored in media research (Clayman and Heritage, 2002; Talbot, 2007; Tolson, 2001; Ytreberg, 2013). Talbot (2007), for example, considered the way Jamie Oliver constructed himself as a celebrity chef. She found evidence of a televised persona discursively performed in a way that indexed professional, health conscious yet working class values. The presentation of self as working class, Talbot (2007) argues, strategically fits with the goals and image of the television show and the potential audience of working class viewers too busy to cook elaborate time-consuming meals (p. 111). This illustrates how, in media interactions, speakers can directly index versions of self to strategically appeal to a particular audience.
The political interviewer is a social identity that has been thoroughly studied by researchers working within the field of Conversation Analysis (Clayman, 2009; Clayman and Heritage, 2002; Clayman and Romaniuk, 2011; Emmertsen, 2007; Heritage and Clayman, 2010). The role these speakers play in media interactions is one often referred to as tribune of the people (Clayman and Heritage, 2002: 171). This identity is indexed by discursive strategies such as adversarial questioning. These discursive moves have been linked to the job interviewers do in upholding democratic values and testing those democratically elected to run the country on behalf of the overhearing audience. Some interviewers have even developed celebrity status for the particularly fervent and adversarial way in which they enact this role (Higgins, 2010).
In addition to the performance of a public identity, public figures may also wish to strategically present more of their personal selves in their media interactions. Tolson (2001) highlights this issue of ‘being yourself’ in his analysis of a behind-the-scenes documentary exploring the post-Spice Girl career of Ginger Spice, also known as Geri Halliwell. Using extracts from the documentary, Tolson explores issues related to celebrities presenting themselves as ordinary people. In some contexts, such as behind-the-scenes documentaries, presenting self as ordinary and authentic may be desirable to the genre (and context) at hand. Tolson (2001) contends that successfully achieving this in a public performance is the extent to which the celebrity’s performance is not perceived as ‘acting’ (p. 445). Tolson provides an analysis of Geri Halliwell’s apparent attempts to achieve this in her documentary talk, focusing particularly on her shifts in footing.
These studies highlight how the presentation of self in media encounters can require the discursive adoption of particular acts and stances to achieve a range of strategically defined goals for performance in a given media context. We now turn to what such considerations might be in media events in a professional sporting context.
The construction of self in the media by professional sports players
For professional athletes, little is known about the context and goals or the linguistic construction of self in media contexts. Dreyfus and Jones (2010) and Lines (2001) have examined the construction of sports stars in the media. Dreyfus and Jones analysed the way sports stars were represented in media coverage of their transgressions and found that they were represented in ways that rendered them less responsible for their actions and less blameworthy. Lines (2001) discusses the problematic construction of sports stars in the media as heroes and role models for young people. He illustrates that while the media has traditionally constructed sports players as role models, the increasing intrusion of the media in the private lives of athletes is confusing this traditional construction, with reports that focus on athletes and their use of drugs, abuse of alcohol, domestic abuse and extramarital affairs (Lines, 2001: 292).
While these studies construct a picture of athletes being above the law or as (anti)heroes for the public, they focus on the construction of athletes by the media, rather than the presentation of self by athletes themselves. Popular accounts of athletes constructing themselves in the media tend to construct a negative picture of athlete identity in the media. The following, which is written in reference to rugby players in New Zealand, is indicative of such accounts:
[S]howtime somehow doesn’t extend to the interview booth. When, after some of the wildest gesticulations on the field, the player fronts up to a microphone all the old modesty returns and there isn’t an original utterance to be heard. (Laidlaw, 2010: 139)
Laidlaw suggests that professional rugby players in New Zealand are in the entertainment business (‘showtime’), but seems to imply that athletes themselves do not see media interactions as part of the entertainment experience and, as a result, take different action when in ‘the interview booth’. He cites discursive stances of modesty and the orientation to unoriginal and presumably general utterances as evidence of this. Systematic, academic research is needed to verify such claims; however, extracts such as these provide a starting point for exploring how a media self might be enacted in a professional rugby context.
Interestingly, the concept of a ‘media self’ was explicitly posited in a sporting context long before the mass media coverage of professional sport that we are accustomed to nowadays. Altheide (1984) specifically examined the influence and effects of the mass media on the presentation of sports players. Using a Communication Studies approach, and drawing on findings from an ethnographic content analysis of field interviews with professional sports players and managers, predominantly from North American baseball contexts, Altheide’s data illustrated that sports players and managers were aware of the presentation of a particular self in the media. He claimed that the mass media context, and in particular its formats and the practices of the media, had an impact on the way players and managers both attempted to and reflected on the self they presented to the media (Altheide, 1984: 193). Altheide (1984) claims that presentations of self in the media are not ‘accidental’, and instead are linked to the context, including ‘the relationship between self, the public and the mass media’ (p. 195), again implying an element of strategy in the presentation of self in the media.
Altheide (1984) says little about how this media self is discursively or linguistically constructed, however, other than to allude to the industry of press agents and media consultants ready to help you ‘cultivate’ your media self (p. 192). To do this, discourse analysis of the linguistic features players employ in authentic media interactions is needed. Such an analytical approach is key to social constructionist approaches to identity analysis that provide a bottom-up empirical exploration of the way identity is constructed (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005: 596) through an analysis of the way linguistic forms implicitly realise interactional acts and stances, which in turn can be seen to characterise particular social groups (Ochs, 1993; Schnurr, 2012: 43). Such an approach can also explore how other stakeholders in media interactions, like media interviewers, contribute to, resist or are complicit in the construction of particular identities.
The study that perhaps most closely resembles the goals of this article is that of Sznycer (2010). She explored the linguistic construction of a powerful identity by female tennis players in press conferences. She found that the conversational style of female tennis players included a mix of stereotypically masculine and feminine features that clash with how femininity is traditionally thought of (Sznycer, 2010: 475). Evident in the data was the adoption of adversarial, confrontational, impolite and self-assured discourse strategies that allowed players to present a powerful version of themselves in the media. These findings illustrate a strategic element important to female tennis players as they construct themselves in these press conferences.
This study
This study will expand on the reviewed research in a number of ways. The primary aim is empirical – to contextualise and explore how a media self, as proposed by Altheide (1984), might be enacted in the media interactions of male professional team sports players. This study will provide empirical insights into the ways in which male professional team sports players discursively construct themselves in a recurring media interaction, the post-match interview (discussed further below). These findings will also be explored in terms of strategy. As illustrated, a media self can be strategic in nature, and these strategies can derive from important considerations of the context, including the intended audience, the behaviour of other interactants, the enactment of a socially recognised role or speaker goals in relation to the presentation of self.
In taking male team sports players as the focus of this study, it will also build on the work carried out by Sznycer (2010). While it is not my intention to analyse gender differences in this study, the findings will indirectly provide insight into the strategies taken by male sports players. However, of more importance is the contextual variable of ‘team sport’, which may prove relevant in contrast to the individual sport context (tennis) explored by Sznycer. In a team sporting context, team identity and team togetherness have been identified as both defining properties and key goals of sports teams (Carron and Hausenblas, 1998; Carron et al., 1997; Moran, 2004) and are therefore an important aspect of the context that may prove relevant when exploring the strategic enactment of self by professional sports players in media interactions.
Methodology: Data set and analytical considerations
The post-match interview has already been subject to examination by discourse analysts (Caldwell, 2009; Emmison, 1987; File, 2012, 2013; Montgomery, 2010). As a discourse genre, the post-match interview is ritually carried out after sports matches to garner the opinions and experiences of those who have played in the match for the benefit of a television audience (File, 2013). File (2013) illustrated the tightly controlled nature of these interviews in relation to time, topics and tasks. The interviews analysed in File (2013) averaged 1 minute and 42 seconds in length, while the topics predominantly focused on the recently completed match, the team, the season and aspects of the interviewee’s professional life (such as contracts, injuries and future career decisions). Researchers have found that players can be expected to perform recurring tasks such as rehearsing emotions (Montgomery, 2010); evaluating the result, the match and particular match events; providing evaluations of one’s own play in the match; reflecting on refereeing decisions; and giving opinions on controversial moments in the match, among others.
While it is not the intention of this study to highlight aspects of post-match interviews in detail, these genre-specific restrictions are important considerations, especially in terms of topic, task and television audience (of sports fans), as they constrain and open up particular subject positions for the interviewees, with their identities as professional athletes and media interviewees becoming of obvious relevance.
Data set: Post-match interviews and ethnographic data
For this study, I draw on a data set of 160 post-match interviews with professional-level athletes from two different team sports (rugby and football) and two different regions (Europe and Oceania). 1 Data subsets from different sports and different regions were collected to see whether trends relating to media performance could be observed across and hence attributed to this social group of professional team sports players in the media.
I also draw on a supplementary data set of 22 hours of ethnographic interviews I conducted with professional sports players and ex-professional sports players from football and rugby contexts in both Europe and Oceania. 2 This supplementary data set provided insight into the community who carry out and produce these interviews, and the challenges and issues they face when conducting themselves in the media. These insights were particularly useful when warranting claims formulated from the post-match interview data, but also in relation to exploring strategic elements of media performance by this social group. Utilising these two sets of data allowed for etic and emic perspectives to be formulated with respect to the research goals of this study (Duff, 2002: 292) and allowed for both analyst and participant perspectives to be drawn on the cultural practices of speakers. This is particularly important in genres where the analyst has no previous experience as a speaking participant, as is the case here.
Analysing identity performance in sports player media interactions: Indexicality
From a social constructionist perspective, when analysing the discursive construction of social identity, there is no one-to-one match between language feature and particular social category (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; Ochs, 1993). Rather, the connection is explained by the concept of indexicality, whereby semiotic links between linguistic forms and actions and the social meanings these actions construct are accounted for and subsequently linked with a particular social identity, in a particular social context (Bucholtz and Hall, 2005; Silverstein, 2003). Bucholtz and Hall’s (2005: 594) analytical framework for locating identity in language use draws on the indexicality principle. Bucholtz and Hall outline the indexicality principle as follows:
Identity relations emerge in interaction through several related indexical processes, including: (a) overt mention of identity categories and labels; (b) implicatures and presuppositions regarding one’s own or others’ identity position; (c) displayed evaluative and epistemic orientations to ongoing talk, as well as interactional footings and participant roles; and (d) the use of linguistic structures and systems that are ideologically associated with specific personas and groups.
These four sub-principles of Bucholtz and Hall’s indexicality principle guided analytical inquiry of the post-match interview data in this study. After systematic analysis of the recurring post-match interview genre tasks in the data, attention turned to the way interviewers and interviewees conducted themselves in these tasks. All levels of linguistic and discursive action were considered, particularly the evaluative and epistemic orientations to the ongoing talk between interviewers and interviewees, and the varying lexical choices of interviewers and interviewees. These choices were explored in relation to the connotations these choices indexed. Analysis also involved consideration of the ways interviewers used language to construct or position interviewees, which, as will be illustrated, often conflicted with the way interviewees wanted to present themselves and often required strategic discursive action to redress the position created.
The analytical outcome was the identification of a set of general interactional acts and stances employed by players when responding to recurring tasks set by interviewers in post-match interviews that could be observed as trends across the interview subsets. These results are presented in Findings 1.
From the ethnographic data, comments were identified that referred to the ‘media self’ as an overt identity category and to the discursive actions players took in these interviews, as well as to why such actions were important. These findings not only provided support for the semiotic link between action and the stances taken by sports players in the media, but also provided insights into the strategic motivation for the presentation of self in these particular ways. These results are discussed in Findings 2.
Findings 1: Discursive presentation of self in post-match interview interactions
The analysis revealed a concern by players across the data set to construct self as a team player, as a good sport and as a balanced and not overly emotional person in post-match media interactions. Players drew on a variety of linguistic resources at different levels to index these stances. However, as noted earlier, interviewer elicitations frequently threatened the aforementioned interactional stances (directly or indirectly) and therefore required particular discursive management by interviewees. Evidence of these stances being constructed is discussed in the following three subsections.
Constructing self as a (modest) team player
In the data, players actively constructed themselves as a member of a team. This aspect of their identity was particularly evident when interviewers sought to bestow individual praise upon them, as illustrated in Extracts 1 and 2:
1 what about that goal= 2 =an absolute cracker 3 you you’re the one who basically single-handedly salvaged the point for the roar
4 ah I wouldn’t say sing- single-handedly 5 all the boys + all the boys played well + ah + in their own way + you know 6 to get the result that we did + under the pump {laughs} as we were 7 um + nah it’s not single-handedly 8 it was with teamwork
1 juan you must be delighted= 2 =it was your try that started the mo- shift the momentum shift for the stormers
3 yeah just unbelievable comeback aye 4 ah I I can’t say it’s my try 5 it’s ah + a fifteen man performance 6 the forwards ah hit it up and the backs we just we just ah finished at the end of the day 7 so it’s it’s just um a remarkable comeback for us 8 and just happy to win this game
Such questions were common, and the strategies employed by players revealed a lot of similarities. In both examples, the interviewer focuses on the interviewee’s individual contributions and their importance in achieving a positive result. Both interviewees employ discursive acts to reject this positioning and orient to a team player stance. In Extract 1, the interviewee achieves this stance through disagreement (line 4) and redirection moves (line 5), while his use of tokens such as ‘the boys’ (line 5) and the numerous uses of the pronoun ‘we’ reference teamwork. At no stage does the interviewee acknowledge himself or his efforts in his response other than to suggest that he would not consider it a ‘single-handed’ rescue effort.
Almost identical strategies are employed in Extract 2. In this example, the interviewee initially ignores the elicitation and foregrounds the ‘amazing comeback’ (line 3) in the match. He then returns to the interviewer’s assessment of his impact and rejects it (line 4), before redirecting the praise to the team (line 5, ‘fifteen man performance’). He elaborates on this in line 6 by praising a particular subgroup of the team to which he does not belong (‘the forwards’) for doing the hard work and positions himself as a member of another subgroup (‘the backs’) who benefited from the forwards hard work (‘the backs we just finished’). The use of ‘just’ (line 6) further diminishes his efforts as an individual, and the attribution of the comeback to ‘us’ (line 7) positions the player as a part of the group.
In addition to acts such as deflection, rejection and redirection of praise, self-deprecation was another discursive strategy players employed to address praise directed at their individual accomplishments, as Extract 3 illustrates:
1 sweet kick 2 sweet kick 3 did you know it was over for the moment you hit it
4 well it was blown over to be honest 5 i don’t know if it had the legs 6 no + um yeah I think the boys did the hard work up front 7 and ah to get the penalty at the end was fantastic 8 and + and to come on and and to get the winning kick obviously’s ah big bonus for me 9 but + I have to say that the the lads were fantastic 10 the forwards were immense 11 and + and I think big bob casey got the got the man of the match 12 so ah I think it’s very well deserved
In this exchange, the interviewer compliments the interviewee’s final match-winning penalty kick, before asking him for a recount of his thought processes after immediately kicking the ball. Such elicitations potentially threaten a team-oriented stance by isolating the interviewee for his heroics. The interviewee responds by immediately reducing his own personal effort, putting it down to assistance from the wind (lines 4–5). Such self-deprecating actions were often accompanied by laughter or smiles and were used in the initial position immediately after an interviewer’s elicitation. As a discourse move, it deals with the immediate topic of the individual and leaves the interviewee to pursue other messages. In this example, having dealt with the task and topic of the elicitation using self-deprecation, the interviewee then redirects in a way similar to Extracts 1 and 2 to praise other subgroups and other individual players in the team for their efforts, and redefines his match-winning kick as a bonus and a result of hard work carried out by other players.
These actions redistribute the praise across the team and help the player to index themselves as team-oriented. They could simultaneously index social meanings of modesty, a feature highlighted by Laidlaw (2010) above. Elicitations isolating individual efforts threaten a modest self. By deflecting praise for these efforts in the match, the player shows the audience that they are not concerned with celebrating their own personal accomplishments (Holmes et al., 2012).
Constructing self as a good sport
Feezell (1986) argues that a good sport tries to play well and strives for victory, avoids taking unfair advantage of their opponent and reacts graciously following victory and defeat. Fair play, from a sports psychology perspective, is manifested in, among other actions, the acceptance of the rules without arguing with the referees’ decisions and acting in a dignified manner in victory and defeat (Gutierrez del Pozo et al., 2014: 55). In the data explored here, players discursively constructed themselves as respectful of referees and their decisions and as both gracious winners and gracious losers. These actions fit definitions of good sportsmanship and fair play and could therefore be seen as indexing a ‘good sport’ stance.
Respecting referees and their decisions
Interviewers would often present opportunities for players to reflect on and even criticise refereeing decisions that had had an important impact on the match. However, in this data set, players employed a range of strategies to avoid the opportunity provided, as illustrated in Extract 4:
1 did you feel there should’ve been a penalty to the ospreys right at the death there ryan 2 oh look (unclear words) that’ll be deliberated over and decisions will be made 3 and everyone’ll have their own opinion 4 um=
5 =what was yours 6 what was your gut instinct
7 um + look I’d need to have another look at it 8 I’m not really at liberty to say at the moment
When asked for his opinion about a controversial refereeing decision, the interviewee avoids the elicitation altogether, instead offering comments acknowledging potential conflicting accounts (lines 2–3). When pushed further by the interviewer (lines 5–6), the interviewee employs more direct avoidance strategies by suggesting he cannot provide an opinion at the current time citing a need to review the video footage (lines 7–8). These strategies allow a player to perform their role as an interviewee by providing an answer of sorts to the question. However, they simultaneously express a reluctance to speak about refereeing decisions. It may be that such strategies help them avoid the potential for making ungracious remarks or having their remarks interpreted as ungracious.
Even when pushed on refereeing decisions, players drew on additional strategies to help manage a position as respectful of referees. Extract 5 is an interesting example of this:
1 now I don’t want to get you in trouble 2 but there was a fair bit of + controversy 3 how did you see those incidents 4 because you were certainly up close 5 particularly the first one
6 yeah oh well they’re all pens aren’t they for me in our eyes 7 but you know the referee’s there 8 and ah + he’s made his decisions 9 so we’re not gonna make any excuses about anything like that 10 so we’ll just get ready for the newcastle on sunday now
The interviewer applies even more pressure in his elicitation turn by producing evidence to suggest the interviewee was in a good position to have an opinion of the refereeing decisions (lines 4–5). Yet, despite this pressure the interviewee still manages to index respect for the referee and his decisions in his response. His initial opinion in line 6, which could be taken as implicit criticism of the referee’s decision not to award penalties, is minimised by making use of stance markers that explicitly mark these opinions as his own (‘in our eyes’ and ‘for me’). This action potentially creates the meaning of a difference in opinion rather than an explicit criticism of the referee and his decisions. The interviewee takes further action to reduce any potential criticism implied by his comments by establishing the referee’s authority in such matters (lines 7–8). The use of ‘but’ (line 7) helps to mark these subsequent remarks as more informationally prominent than those made in line 6. Excuses for a bad performance or when things go wrong have also been linked to bad sportsmanship (Ryska, 2003: 278). Therefore, the reference to not ‘make any excuses’ (line 9) could also be an attempt by this interviewee to further lay claim to a good sport stance.
Being gracious in defeat and victory
As mentioned earlier, acting in a dignified way in victory and defeat is another way a good sport stance can be indexed (Feezell, 1986). Previous research on post-match interviews has shown a concern for winners and losers to congratulate and/or commiserate with each other (Emmison, 1987). Similar results were found here.
When speaking as a losing player, the data often revealed discursive actions that appeared to index a positive orientation to the winning team. These included actions such as congratulating the winning team, acknowledging their accomplishments or indicating the challenge the opposition provided (a challenging opposition being a positive evaluation in a professional sporting context). Extract 6 illustrates several of these strategies:
1 david how tough was that for a containment exercise
2 yeah it was very tough= 3 =they’re a good side you know 4 they’re the best side in the section by a + a long way in my opinion 5 and um + gotta give them a lot of credit 6 you know they’re a good team 7 and you know like you say we’ll just try and minimize it I think
After providing an evaluation that aligns with the interviewer’s assessment of the match as being tough (line 2), the interviewee attributes the toughness experienced by his team as result of the quality of the opposition (line 3). He elaborates by providing further positive assessments of the opposition, including their status as the best team in the playing group, and by crediting them and their efforts. Such moves praise the winning side, particularly in a situation where the team has been beaten convincingly (as is the case in Extract 6). These actions help to index the stance of being a gracious loser. Interestingly, this is the first elicitation of the interview, and the comments about the opposition were unsolicited, perhaps suggesting explicit concern on the part of the interviewee to get these meanings across early in the interview.
Maintaining a good sport stance appeared to be equally important for winners and was constructed through a range of similarly complimentary remarks such as acknowledgement of the efforts and difficulty of the losing team. Interviewers would often provide opportunities for winning interviewees to discuss the losing team positively by directing specific focus to this in their elicitations. However, winning interviewees also took it upon themselves to praise the losing team, as Extracts 7 and 8 illustrate:
1 it was + an unbelievable way sensational circumstances 2 the manner of the way you guys did it 3 particularly the equaliser in the last second or so of the game
4 incredible 5 I mean + ah azza ricky composed finishers great + um 6 fir- first of all I just wanna say + ah the central coast were amazing 7 they um + you know they’ve been great this finals series 8 we’ve + three occasions we’ve played them 9 three occasions and and um you know we haven’t got on top of them + um throughout 10 the whole ninety minutes only at at periods 11 so they’re a great side 12 and + and they were very unlucky today
1 yeah thanks very much tony 2 kevin obviously you’d be delighted 3 you’ve retained the + gordon hunter memorial trophy
4 yeah- definitely 5 that ah the trophy means a lot to us 6 yea- we know how hard it is to come especially come down here to carisbrook 7 it’s ah it’s probably one of the toughest matches you get in super 14 8 so ah we’re really delighted with the ah result
In Extract 7, the interviewer’s elicitation focuses the interviewee on the circumstances in which the victory was achieved, which are initially addressed by the interviewee in lines 4–5. However, as in Extract 6, the interviewee abruptly shifts the focus to the opposition (line 6) and uses the remainder of his turn to acknowledge their efforts, through evaluation of their team and performance as ‘amazing’ and ‘great’, and even to commiserate with them (line 12). He prioritises these remarks using the discourse marker ‘first of all’. In lines 8–9, the interviewee further praises the losing side by recounting the difficulties his team experienced against them in previous encounters. Such choices illustrate concern with the losing side and their fans and could be perceived of as indexing graciousness in victory.
In Extract 8, similar strategies are employed in a rugby context. The interviewee, also unsolicited, praises the losing side by providing an evaluation of them as being ‘hard’ to play against (lines 6–7), a positive assessment in a competitive context.
Constructing self as balanced and measured
Players also appeared keen to present themselves as balanced and measured, particularly in response to frequent interviewer assessments that were strong in nature or promoted some sort of expectation. In these data, players would often reject or downgrade strong interviewer assessments, as Extract 9 illustrates:
1 how much is this a turning point for bath’s season 2 oh it’s a bit early to say i think you know ah 3 everyone likes to talk about turning points and make these big dramatic statements 4 but it’s a game + that we played for eighty minutes 5 today we won the game and we got some points in the bag 6 and ah you know we’re heading up to edinburgh next week 7 and let’s see what we can do there
Here, the interviewer provides a strong assessment of the victory in this match as a turning point for the interviewee’s team. The interviewee implicitly rejects this assessment (line 2) and re-evaluates the result as just another victory, hence reducing the strength of the assessment. He then provides several largely ideational assessments in lines 4–5 (it’s a game, we played for eighty minutes, we won the game) which are noticeably devoid of evaluative tokens, but could be interpreted as contributing to the construction of a more grounded interpretation of this result as just a win.
The modification of strongly positive assessments by interviewers in reference to other facets of the match was also common. In Extract 10, the interviewee (from a football context) draws on similar strategies to reduce the interviewer’s positive assessment of a newly formed striking partnership between the interviewee and another member of the team:
1 it’s funny isn’t it um central striking partnerships 2 sometimes they just click straight away 3 and other times they can be a real work in progress 4 that was a very promising start
5 yeah promising start 6 I still think it’s a work in progress 7 I mean let’s not get too carried away + 8 I think ah + all the boys played well 9 ah there was some very good assists 10 and and no spectacular goals 11 it just shows how good the build up actually was 12 so + not just my ser- myself and smeltzy 13 but also everyone else behind us= 14 =the midfield did a great job 15 and once again we kept a clean sheet 16 which shows why we’ve got the best defence in the league
The interviewee agrees with the interviewer’s assessment and reiterates the partnership as promising (line 5). However, he does not retain the adverb ‘very’ and immediately modifies the interviewer’s assessment with his own, evaluating the partnership as a work in progress (line 6). Strategies of redirection are also employed throughout this turn by the interviewee (initially at lines 8–9) to help shift the focus from himself and his playing partner to the team as a unit (see above, section titled ‘Constructing self as a (modest) team player).
A balanced self was also commonly indexed more subtly through the selection of weaker evaluative lexis than that used by interviewers in their assessments, as Extract 11 illustrates:
1 well andrew ah + taking over the captaincy 2 that’s a great way to start the season
3 yeah no it was obviously a little bit nervous after the first half 4 but we come out and got our act together 5 and ah come out in the second half and put a pretty good performance in
The ambiguous ‘yeah no’ in line 3 may indicate a reluctant acceptance of the positive assessment (Burridge and Florey, 2002: 163–164). However, more obvious is the use of weaker evaluative choices by the interviewee. The interviewer’s assessment of the victory as ‘great’ (line 2) is tentatively agreed with in line 3, but lexically modified and mitigated in line 5 as it is downgraded to ‘pretty good’.
The evidence presented above has illustrated how professional sports players draw on a range of discursive resources to construct themselves as balanced, team-oriented good sports in post-match media interview interactions. In the next section, I summarise findings from analysis of the ethnographic data, concentrating on themes relating to the presentation of self in the media.
Findings 2: Ethnographic insights into presentation and motivation for a media self
There was evidence in the ethnographic data that suggested a ‘media self’ was a relevant social identity for professional sports players, one that was enacted deliberately and in association with particular strategic aims and that sometimes departed from the presentation of self in other ways in non-media contexts. The following extracts capture these general trends:
1 you slip straight into a ++
1 I’m more reluctant to be like that [jovial, funny] + treat it as a job and you 2 know + i suppose treat it ah see it as part of your job and be +++ 3
1 2 you know ++ 3 up you know and not just wilt
Ethnographic data extract 1 was offered, unsolicited, at the beginning of this ethnographic interview. New Zealand Professional Rugby Player 1 explicitly assigns an identity category ‘media face’ to his behaviour in interviews and draws attention to the ‘slip[ping] straight into’ a media face when confronted by the cameras. He also acknowledges it as a self-protection mechanism, which will be discussed further below.
Ethnographic data extract 2, given by a professional rugby player in Europe, highlights the distinction between various aspects of one’s identity. Chris Paterson draws a distinction between personal and workplace identities (lines 2–3), identifying media performances and his behaviour in them as a professional identity he enacts. The extract also suggests a concern with discursively presenting himself in the media as a member of the team (line 3), a feature that was evident in the discourse data (see above, in particular section on ‘Constructing self as a (modest) team player).
Ethnographic data extract 3 reveals differences in the presentation of self in media and more private spaces. In this extract, Richard McCaw, captain of the national rugby team of New Zealand, speaking about his post-match interview after losing a World Cup quarter-final in 2007 in controversial fashion, describes his behaviour in this media interview as an attempt to index a stance of the gracious loser (line 1), while also alluding to different behaviour in more private interactions (line 2).
Support for enacting a team-oriented, good sport, balanced self in the media
In addition, the ethnographic data revealed support for the social acts and stances identified in the discourse data as being important considerations for players when speaking to the media. Players often indicated a desire to actively avoid making positive remarks about their own performance and index a team-oriented self. The comments of Anton Oliver (an ex-New Zealand rugby player) in Ethnographic data extract 4 illustrate this:
1 i’d like to have said the ref had a poor game and I’d like to have said we 2 played really well today + like really well + in fact I started doing it at the end 3 of my tenure just saying yeah we played really well but the difficulty with that 4 is I couldn’t say the front row or the forwards played really well + I couldn’t 5 say the front row because I’m in the front row ++ so I can speak generically 6 about the team that’s fine + but I start saying the forwards and the lineout 7 went really well OH ++ so you have to really watch by association that you 8 don’t big up yourself + that’s just you can’t + that’s the biggest no no + self 9 inflation
Here, Anton Oliver suggests paying personal accolades to yourself is a ‘no no’ (line 8). The extract also suggests that players go to a great deal of effort to avoid any potential interpretation of individualism within a team sports context by ensuring that they do not indirectly praise themselves by association (lines 4–5 and line 7), a theme that was relevant in Extracts 2, 3 and 10 earlier. By attributing praise to players in other positions and subgroups, interviewees can help avoid such charges.
A number of references in the ethnographic data highlighted the need to be gracious in victory and defeat. Interviewees also constantly cited the need to avoid speaking about refereeing decisions, as Ethnographic data extract 5 suggests:
1 The ref is always sacred territory now and and and I’m big on that I just don’t 2 think you should you know + no matter how bad a ref if you’re a good enough 3 team you get round a bad ref + if + they can cost you games but as soon as you 4 start moaning it’s just a bad look I reckon so as much as you wanna criticise 5 him + when you hear the opposite when a player or coach has had a bad call 6 and they are real gracious about it + whenever I hear that I just think that 7 sounds so good
This extract suggests that ‘moaning’ about refereeing decisions looks bad, and both Ethnographic data extracts 4 and 5 highlight a tension between at times ‘wanting to criticise’ or wanting to ‘say the referee had a bad game’, but deciding not to because of the various implications for how one comes across. These indicate strategic action on the part of the players to construct themselves in particular ways in these media interactions.
Motivation for enacting these stances in post-match media interviews
Ethnographic data extracts 3–5 imply that coming across well in front of audiences is a key concern for sports players when constructing themselves in the media. However, what also appeared to be relevant was the need to manage relationships within their team. Errant interviews that cause waves may find their way back to the coaches and players in the team, which can affect team unity or even their position in the team. The adoption of team-oriented, gracious and balanced stances seems to function as a self-protection mechanism to help players avoid irritating others in their workplace environments, as Ethnographic data extract 6 indicates:
1 If you want a long career in the game probably in the same way that you want 2 to have a long career at Victoria University or be successful with your 3 doctorate you don’t wanna go around pissing people off + for the most part 4 it’s a team + you’ve got to get on with people in the same way you’ve got to 5 get on with people in your office + and if you go + no one likes a dickhead and 6 media is a great way to make yourself unpopular at a club you know by saying 7 something stupid you want to be a good guy to have around and that’s 8 probably a big part of being a successful athlete
This extract, from a recently retired professional football player, does indicate that media performances can threaten a player’s status in the team and illustrates the need for strategic and careful consideration. This interviewee goes on to provide a personal anecdote that links in with presenting self as a team player:
1 I’ve showed up to training and I remember that I’d sort of half-jokingly said 2 something about + in the paper about you know + it was some sort of 3 throwaway comment about the fact that + the back four or the defence was 4 getting all the plaudits + but + you know we’d done quite well in the midfield + 5 and I rock up to training and the article’s above my locker and everyone’s 6 hammering me
From this anecdote, it seems that one way to bring undue attention to oneself is to actively seek, acknowledge or give oneself praise in public, even by association. Whether in jest or not, it shows such behaviour is marked in this particular context and therefore desirably avoided. Team sport and the need to be unified could therefore be seen as an influence on the way interviewees present themselves in the media, particularly in relation to the way individual praise and accolade is dealt with. In Ethnographic data extract 8, one player offered a similar explanation for why taking a balanced stance was also important for maintaining one’s position within the team:
1 try not to get carried away + try and keep sort of a + equilibrium + just not try 2 and get carried away with it + it was great but there’s so many things we need 3 to improve on still ++ boring english interview really + if you get carried away 4 you just get shot down
5 who shoots you down
6 you feel that you don’t want to get too carried away the manager might think 7 ++ he’s getting a bit above himself or + you know you don’t want to come 8 across as being cocky or whatever
The interviewee expresses a desire to come across well in the eyes of the manager. He may also be referring to the audience more generally when expressing the aim of not appearing cocky. However, it does indicate that players may also appear balanced in the media as a way of insulating themselves from negative perceptions (of getting carried away) potentially being formed by those in charge of the team. These remarks highlight that social action taken by players in media interviews is not solely motivated by the desire to appear favourable in the eyes of the television audience, but is also motivated by the desire to appear favourable within one’s own team unit.
Discussion and conclusion
The analysis in the previous sections has demonstrated that a media self is a relevant social identity for professional team sports players and has provided evidence of how this identity category is discursively constructed in post-match media interviews. Professional team sports players appear to be concerned with constructing themselves as team players, as good sports and as measured and balanced individuals in these interviews. Players orient to these stances by drawing on a range of discursive strategies which are particularly evident when interviewers threaten these stances with questions that require interviewees to focus on their individual accomplishments, reflect on or criticise refereeing decisions, and evaluate match circumstances using superlatives. In these circumstances, players tend to take strategic action in the form of disagreement and redirection moves to contest the interviewers’ underlying presuppositions and reconstruct self in line with the afore mentioned stances.
These findings add to our developing knowledge of the discourse of professional sports players, particularly by exploring ways in which a ‘media self’, proposed by Altheide (1984), can be discursively constructed in media interactions in a male, professional team sports context. However, it is not claimed that team sports players only construct themselves in post-match interviews in the ways identified here or that they always present themselves in this way in all media interactions. Rather, these actions might best be understood to represent aspects of an unmarked and socially recognisable knowledge of how team sports players ‘should’ behave when presenting self in media events like post-match interviews. Instances where an interviewee has given an emotional outburst, criticised referees or has potentially been arrogant in a post-match interview often become the focus of their own news stories, which clearly indicates the markedness of such behaviour (see e.g. Bourke sorry for comments, 2010; Giteau facing suspension for criticism of ref, 2010; Ma’a Nonu sorry for post-match outburst, 2010; Warriors skipper Simon Mannering blows up, 2010).
Drawing on participant insights into the social practices of players in media interviews, the motivation for constructing these stances has also been explored. Earlier studies have noted that the construction of self in the media is often underpinned by strategic audience-influenced goals. In this context, players identified two goals in particular when presenting self in public: (1) achieving a positive perception by the television audience of fans and viewers and (2) achieving a positive perception by one’s team mates and coaches. The findings from these data have contributed further insights into the strategic nature of self-presentation in media performances (Clayman and Heritage, 2002; Talbot, 2007; Tolson, 2001) by illustrating how the maintenance of external audience relationships (made possible in a media context) and internal team-directed relationships can be strategic goals that impact discursive practices of speakers in the media.
The analysis has also highlighted the impact of the ‘team’ on the construction of self in the sports media. In contexts like a professional sports team, this feature may be particularly constraining for players in their public presentations and one that may be of less concern for individual athletes. The aggressive, adversarial, confrontational, self-assured, exaggerated and ego-enhancing behaviour of female tennis players found in Sznycer (2010) was not evident in the data analysed here. While Sznycer’s analysis may reflect the often combative nature of the press conference interactions from which her findings were drawn, it may also reflect a greater amount of freedom individual athletes have in self-presentation, owing to the fact that they do not represent other team mates, coaches and managers in their media interviews. Therefore, in team sports, the need to negotiate or manage ‘we-ness’ (Carron and Hausenblas, 1998; Moran, 2004) or team cohesiveness in the media is perhaps more of a constraint.
Clearly, this study has raised a number of issues for further research. The performances of team sports players in other media interactions and genres, both connected to and away from match day contexts, are one such area, in order to explore the ways in which genre, setting and other contextual features interact with media performance choices. Post-match interviews are connected to a sporting event in which speakers are involved not as individuals but as a part of the team. This setting is likely to influence the player’s choices to strategically present self in line with conceived team values. However, other media interactions may constrain players to present self in less team-oriented and more individual ways, and the basis for shifts in media self-presentation decisions may lie in aspects of the social context such as the setting or genre.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Janet Holmes for her helpful comments on a draft of this paper, and the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the professional sports players who generously gave up their time to speak to me for this research.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.