Abstract
In the last three decades, there has been an increasing interest among scholars in the use of address terms across domains such as academia, politics, religion, family, friendship, and sports. The present study examines the range of address terms and the factors that influence their use among male basketball players in a Ghanaian university. In this study, we draw on the notion of community of practice. An ethnographic research approach, comprising mainly participant and non-participant observation and interview, was adopted in collecting our data. Two key findings emerged from the analysis. First, Ghanaian male university students used four major categories of address terms while playing basketball: personal names, descriptive terms, nicknames, and ethnic-related terms. Second, in general, these address forms constituted an isogloss or idiolect, identifying the male basketball players as a distinct community of practice. These findings have implications for the sociolinguistic research on address terms in the domain of sports, gendered language, and further research on communication in sports.
Highlights
Sports communication continues to be a very important branch of communication, it has not elicited as much interest as communication in other domains such as the media and politics
The findings of the analysis are, on one hand, situated in a socio-cultural context and a group and, on the other hand, interpreted in terms of their implications for sports communication, gendered language, and further research in sociolinguistics on address terms. 1.2 Conceptual Background we sketch the conceptual terrain of the study by discussing a) a key sociolinguistic concept and b) pertinent empirical studies on address terms used among the youth, especially students. 1.2.1 Notion of Community of Practice The notion of interest in this study is community of practice
To the concern of the study we turn. 3.4 Ethnic-related Address Terms we report on the findings concerning how ethnicity influences the use of address terms used among male basketball players, who admittedly come from different ethnic backgrounds in Ghana
Summary
Sports communication continues to be a very important branch of communication, it has not elicited as much interest as communication in other domains such as the media and politics. Following from the above, we can consider student basketball players as a homogeneous group in terms of their obvious rationale: to have fun by playing basketball, away from the hustle and bustle of intensive academic activities They are involved in a “joint negotiated enterprise; and a shared repertoire of negotiable resources accumulated over time” Male students may engage in some regular practices while playing basketball but our interest in the present study is in their use of address terms Characterizing this group of university students as a community of practice is important for this study as it highlights students as members of a group, though they may at different times be members of other groups in the university such as discipline-specific groups (e.g., Students of English Association, Faculty of Arts Students Association) and old students’ association (e.g., Mfantsipim Students’ Association) or ethnic-related associations (e.g., Brong Ahafo Students’ Association).
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