Exploring socioaffective semiotricity: emotions and relational signs in traditional sporting games

Abstract

Abstract The traditional sporting games (TSGs) correspond to a set of signs full of meanings, which come to life through the motor behaviors of the players as they participate in its semiotic semantics. As a result of this exchange, interpersonal conflicts may emerge because of each person’s semiotic interpretation of the sociomotor dynamics of the game. This research aimed to analyze the comments of intense negative emotions that arise in conflicts of a praxical nature (motor conflict) in a TSG, in its different parts (generating agent, conflict response), and in the motor interventions of its protagonists (conflict management). A total of 160 university students (M age = 20.49, SD = 2.28) participated in a competitive sociomotor traditional sporting game of cooperation-opposition: the Marro. At the end of the practice, all answered the validated GES-II questionnaire. Subsequently, a content analysis of 480 comments was performed using ATLAS.ti 8.4 software. The conclusion of this work verifies the existence of different levels of meaning in the semiotic experience that originate interpersonal conflicts in traditional sporting games. Considering the multidimensional network of signs and meanings that emerge in any game will help to understand the meaning of the protagonists’ conflictive motor conducts.