Page 25 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

14 • Sport, Media and Society

This chapter introduces techniques for the analysis of media sport and explains their the-
oretical context using the work of key thinkers such as Saussure, Barthes and Hall. Media
sport is conceptualised in three ways within the chapter, as signs, as discourses and as
affects, and corresponding analytical toolkits are presented. Firstly, a semiotic approach
to analysing media sport is demonstrated, using newspaper coverage of footballer Paul
Gascoigne. The second approach presented is discourse analysis, which involves the utili-
sation of a series of concepts—the statement, discursive formation, intertextuality—that
can illuminate meaning in media sport. This form of analysis is explored with reference
to the media’s portrayal of celebrity footballers. Finally, the power of media sport to move

us bodily is explored through the concept of affect, and reflexive techniques are presented
as a means of analysing the nonrepresentational impact of media sport. Used alone or in
combination with each other, these approaches provide a basis for understanding the mul-
tiple forms of mediated sport. Subsequent chapters build on the foundations of analysis

presented here, drawing out the specific characteristics associated with different media.

Sport as Signs: Semiotic Analysis of Media Sport

The study of signs, otherwise known as ‘semiotics’ or ‘semiology’, originates with
the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) and the American philosopher
Charles Saunders Peirce (1839–1914). Both theorists had their work published post-
humously: in the case of Saussure, as lecture notes, and in Peirce’s case, as successive
reworkings of his thesis.
Saussure developed his ideas regarding language in response to dominant trends
among his contemporaries, who thought of language as a naming process asserted
the existence of an intrinsic link between a word and the thing it denotes. Saussure
challenged this conceptualisation of language, and instead saw language as a system
of signs that express ideas—a network of elements that have meaning only in rela-
tion to each other. For Saussure, a sign was composed of two parts: the signifi ed

and the signifier. In language, this would mean that the letters F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L

are the signifier of a concept ‘football’—a round, air-filled object used in the sport

of football—which is the signifi ed. Together the signifier and the signifi ed make

up the sign: football. The two parts of the sign have an arbitrary connection with
each other—there is no direct or inherent relationship between the word and the ob-
ject it designates: we could use another arrangement of letters (in another language,
for example) to signify the same concept. In fact, in the United States, the letters
S-O-C-C-E-R signify what F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L refers to in the United Kingdom, and

F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L signifies an oblong-shaped ball used in a different game—known
as American football in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. What makes it seem
like the two parts of the sign are intimately connected is simply that everyone in

the United Kingdom has agreed that F-O-O-T-B-A-L-L signifies ‘football’. It is a
socially determined, consensual relationship.