Discourse of discipline: Communicative strategies in coaches' speech

Abstract

The great importance sport plays in modern society has resulted in analyses of many aspects of its social dynamics. The relationship of its main actors, in this case the coaches and athletes, was most often discussed form pedagogical, psychological and sociological stances and a relatively small number of studies referred to their communication, or rather its linguistic expression. The aim of this research was to describe the pragmatic mechanisms and the strategy of disciplining that coaches use when talking to athletes in two typical situations in sport: in training and at a competition. The research corpus, collected by a Discourse Completion Test, consists of authentic responses from 93 coaches of both genders. The corpus for analysis included 196 responses, categorised as clusters of speech acts which according to the strategic model could be categorised as examples of the disciplining strategy. Qualitative analysis provided an insight into the types of speech acts used in the analysed speech sequences, the functioning of politeness strategies used to mitigate the pressure on the interlocutors face, conversation implicatures and presuppositions which enable interpretation of the intended meaning that shapes coaches' discourse. The results of the analysis imply that coaches prefer using a more direct strategy in both observed situations, but also that by combining politeness strategies and indirectness they frequently disguise their communicative intentions, which most often refer to disciplining and requiring a change in the behaviour of the athlete. The conclusions we reached could be practically used in the education of coaches, by raising awareness of the importance of the aspects of linguistic production that would be appropriate in training and competitive situations, since the choice of linguistic strategies can improve the interaction of coaches and athletes.