Regarding sport as a sociocultural activity, The language of inclusion and exclusion in sports presents a collection of discourse analytic and pragmatic research within the domain of sports. Organised into three parts with fourteen chapters, this volume explores various aspects of language and pragmatics in interactions at the micro level, connecting observations to broader issues of inclusion and exclusion at the macro level. In addition to contributing to research in sports discourse by identifying key language patterns, it also proposes feasible ways for improving current practices.

Each section in this book zooms in on a specific aspect. Part 1 (chapter 1 to 6) focuses on authentic interactions both on and off the court. It begins with an examination of coaches’ influence in fostering an inclusive atmosphere through translanguaging practices (chapter 1) and the use of collective pronoun ‘we’ (chapter 3). Centred around players, chapters 4 and 5 utilise ethnographic data to investigate linguistic behaviours related to the distribution of interactional rights and the confirmation of status within sports teams. Shifting to online communication, chapter 2 and 6 analyse social media posts, including Instagram and fan forums, to combat racial injustice and sexual discrimination.

Part 2 (chapter 7 to 9) furthers Part 1 by providing case studies focusing on how the sports media portrays inclusion/exclusion, especially regarding female and transgender athletes. The first two chapters discover how sexism is reported and negotiated in the Australian (chapter 7) and Turkish (chapter 8) media. By analysing discursive strategies such as sexualisation, infantilisation, and trivialisation of female athletes, the authors in chapters 7 and 8 observe progress in portraying women as skilled athletes and national icons. In contrast, chapter 9 reveals that the British press frames debates on transgender athletes around inclusion and fairness, often creating an ideological binary between cis and transgender women, reflecting implicit transphobia.

Part 3 (chapter 10 to 14) presents three interviews, which analyse athletes’ reflections on their own or other stakeholders’ language use related to inclusion/exclusion. Emphasising ideological rather than structural inclusion, the first two cases (chapters 10 and 11) reveal how players experience, negotiate, and critique exclusion in homophobic and gendered sports, while also investigating how they (re)produce forms of (self)exclusion in their own conversations. Chapter 12 unfolds a more complex case, examining the intersection of gender, religion, and athlete identity in female Muslim gymnasts, which places them in marginalised positions. The final two chapters (13 and 14) summarise findings from previous chapters and reflect on how sports practitioners can harness the power of language to reduce exclusion and promote inclusion.

In conclusion, this volume presents a holistic treatment of how languages shape inclusion and exclusion in sports. The editors and authors of the book have addressed a wide range of stakeholders, examined various sports, reported on interactions through multimodal language use, and employed diverse analytical approaches. This collection of discourse analytic research on sports therefore will be of interests to students, linguists, and other academics, as well as sports practitioners from diverse cultural backgrounds.