This volume is a welcome addition to the literature on language use in sport, and the chapters that have been included use a range of theoretical approaches to analyse language in social context, including interactional sociolinguistics, conversation analysis, sociolinguistics of multilingualism, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Of these, the last dominates the volume, with five of the twelve chapters identifying as SFL analyses. In editing a topically themed rather than theoretically themed collection, it is challenging to reconcile a range of competing theoretical approaches and present a cohesive thread that links the chapters, and I am unconvinced that this has been achieved as well as it could have been. It would have been nice to see some dialogue between the individual contributors, with cross-referencing between chapters. In some of the SFL-based chapters, a reader who lacks knowledge of SFL terminology may be somewhat lost in following the analysis, but this is also a problem in some of the other chapters, as noted below. Hence, while individual chapters will suit scholars already familiar with the theoretical approach being used, this is not a volume suitable for a general sociolinguistic audience. However, there are individual chapters that stand out. In this review, I briefly review each chapter in the order they appear.
The book opens with an introductory chapter by the editors, which addresses the major differences between the chapters in the collection. It deals with the wording of the title, which refers to social linguistics, a somewhat opaque label that would seem to suggest a de-identification with sociolinguistics. The editors address this issue by suggesting that this label can be used to include SFL approaches alongside corpus linguistics, interactional sociolinguistics, critical discourse analysis, and conversation analysis. Indeed, not all of these approaches would necessarily be encompassed by the term sociolinguistics, so perhaps therein lies the rationale. Less problematic is the use of discourse in the main title, as every chapter does indeed analyse some form of discourse. This is discussed in the introduction where the difference between discourse and Discourse is highlighted. Both the use of the term social linguistics and the discussion of big-D Discourse link the volume to Gee's (Reference Gee2008) work, also styled as a work on social linguistics, rather than sociolinguistics. Another important contribution of the introduction is to highlight some existing literature on language and sport. As this volume will probably be of interest to anyone beginning research on language and sport, it acts as a useful starting point, particularly for postgraduate researchers.
Following the introduction, there are two SFL chapters: chapter 2, by John Walsh & Jon Jureidini, on the communication between coaches and players during Australian rules football matches, and chapter 3, by Ben Clarke, on transitivity in football commentaries. I found the premise of Walsh & Jureidini's chapter interesting, and their grounded analysis of the functions of language in communication between players and coaches is a useful framework, and one worthy of further exploration in other genres of coach-player communication such as half-time huddles (File & Wilson Reference File, Wilson, De Mieroop and Schnurr2017).
The most important chapter of the collection, from a sociolinguistic perspective, is chapter 4, by Eva Lavric & Jasmin Steiner, in which an analysis of the multilingual practices and translation strategies used in an Austrian football team is presented. Using data collected through participant observation, the authors present an incredibly rich analysis of how a multilingual repertoire is used to negotiate some of the communication problems encountered by second language learners when faced by an unfamiliar dialect of their target language. It also discusses how codeswitching is used and speakers’ attitudes to the language they use (or choose not to use).
Chapter 5, by Kieran A. File, and chapter 6, by Antje Wilton, both focus on postmatch media interviews, but from different perspectives. Using an interactional sociolinguistic framework, File analyses how football managers in the English Premier League use a range of discourse strategies to criticise referees in postmatch media interviews without appearing overtly critical. Wilton, on the other hand uses a conversation-analytic approach in investigating the social function of the postmatch media interview, basing her detailed analysis on a data set of fifty-seven media interviews with players from German football club Bayern München. These two chapters complement one another better than any others in the collection, and it is a rare example of acknowledgement by one author of another author's work, if not a direct reference to the content of the chapter in this collection.
The next two chapters could be said to deal with ‘big D’ Discourses, with chapter 7, by John Walsh & David Caldwell, looking at the discursive construction of talent spotting ideologies amongst football managers, and chapter 8, by Alison Wrench & Robyne Garrett, who present a Foucauldian analysis of racism in Australian sport. Unlike the previous two chapters, however, there is little to link these two together, with the first using the SFL system of appraisal to analyse a sports blog about basketball transfers and a film about baseball coaching, while the second provides a detailed account of the media coverage of racist abuse directed at an Aboriginal Australian rules football player. While Wrench & Garrett's chapter is eminently readable and highly engaging, it is the sort of approach I would expect to find in a sociology volume, not one published in a series on sociolinguistics. Chapter 9, by Eva Lavric & Josef Weidacher, could not be more different, as it is much more language focused. It analyses the use of the conceptual metaphor of ranking in sport, with examples drawn from Spanish media discourse.
In chapter 10, which analyses gendered words in Malaysian sports news discourse, there is a similar issue to that found in some of the earlier chapters (e.g. chapter 3 by Ben Clarke), in that the author Habibah Ismail assumes knowledge of specific terminology that is central to understanding her analysis. The chapter rests on the method of comparative keywords analysis, which involves categorising words in a corpus as either positive or negative keywords, depending on the difference between their expected and observed frequencies, using X2 as the statistic to determine this (Seale, Ziebland, & Charteris-Black Reference Seale, Ziebland and Charteris-Black2006). Unfortunately, this explanation of the method is not covered at all in the chapter, and a reader who is not aware of this meaning of positive and negative may be easily confused by what is otherwise a very interesting chapter that provides a nice example of a corpus-based study of language and gender. This would not be a problem in a collection on corpus linguistics, but in a volume such as this, more explanation is required.
Chapter 11, by Jennifer Fest, takes a similar approach on a similar topic: global sports news discourse, and although she uses a corpus linguistic approach, she does not use the positive/negative distinction. Instead Fest invokes the concept of keyness, which is implied, but not explicit, in Ismail's chapter. Fest identifies her approach as being grounded in SFL, and makes this assertion early in the chapter. This is also one of the few chapters that seems to relate to the surrounding chapters, and indeed in this section of three chapters, there does seem to be a cohesion that is lacking between many of the other chapters. Strangely, there is little, if any, sign of SFL in the methods or analysis that would distinguish this from any other corpus linguistic study into news discourse. That it follows Ismail's chapter makes this even more apparent. The final chapter in the collection, chapter 12, by Helen Caple, also identifies as SFL, but like Fest, Caple uses SFL as a theoretical touchpoint rather than the driving force of her analysis, employing multimodal discourse analysis to consider text, graphics, and layout in an analysis of sports-match reports on news websites.
Overall, this volume is probably a good representation of the field of sports linguistics, in that there are many scholars all researching similar topics, but from a variety of different theoretical positions. What is needed in an emerging field of study such as this is greater communication and collaboration, and hopefully, this volume will prompt some conversations between scholars of language and sport. While I have my reservations about the preponderance of SFL-based approaches in this volume, I applaud the editors in getting this collection together and hope that it leads to further, more varied, volumes on language use in a sporting context.
