Page 235 - Sport Culture and the Media

216 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

Discourse: the social and cultural framework of institutions and (often unacknow-
ledged) assumptions that organize everyday language, thought and behaviour.
Because multiple discourses exist and are connected to structures of power, social
life is characterized by competition between discourses for legitimacy (for example,
monarchism versus republicanism) and, consequently, ‘sovereignty’ over groups in
society.
Fordism: the highly organized method of mass production typified by the assembly line
and reliant on a corresponding level of mass consumption of vast numbers of the
same product. Limited and more flexible production and greater product choice
that does not disturb this overall ‘regime’ is known as neo-Fordism. A substantial
change in the direction of small-batch production, rapid response to shifts in con-
sumption patterns, and more discerning, demanding consumers is often described
as post-Fordist.
Genre: the recognizable and predictable qualities of texts (see below) which allow us to
classify them into types (for example, horror films, rap records and detective
novels), and so represent an implicit ‘contract’ between text producer and con-
sumer. Smaller categories (such as different types of ‘techno music’) are known as
sub-genres.
Globalization: the much debated process through which constraints of time and space
are weakened by accelerated forms of economic, social, cultural, political and tech-
nological exchange. There is considerable disputation over the history, extent and
desirability of the globalization process and its relationship to other processes
such as Americanization and localization.

Ideology: the element of discourse that applies most directly to a group’s interests. For
example, competing ideologies like ‘the free market must decide’ versus ‘the market
must be controlled in the interests of everyone’ are likely to reflect the degree of
benefit that individuals and groups can derive from the different arrangements for
distributing wealth that they promote.

Inter-textual: see text.
Media: all the organizations, large and small, through which pass various types of
message in the process of communication (by which meaning is exchanged).
The term is increasingly restricted to specialist organizations with the substantial
technology, knowledge, information and capital at their disposable to enable
large-scale or ‘mass’ communication.

Media sports cultural complex: a concept that embraces all the media and sports
organizations, processes, personnel, services, products and texts that combine to
create the broad, dynamic field of contemporary sports culture.

Mediatization: the extension of the influence of media into all spheres of social life in a
manner linked to the larger process of culturalization (see above).
Modernist: see postmodernity.