Play on Words

Abstract

Modern sport is both a major form of leisure and a commercial enterprise. Most critiques of the commercialisation of sport focus on such issues as sponsorship, media coverage and the pecuniary rewards of sports people. There is, however, a neglect of the way in which sporting concepts and mythologies are insinuated into other realms of media and society. Advertising is one of the more visible areas where this process can be revealed, but other media activities, such as business and political reporting, should also be highlighted. This paper looks at the ideologies of sport most appealing to advertisers and journalists - team ship and competition. It shows how the dominant, positive meanings of sport are invoked in the non-sporting media either to displace negative interpretations of business relationships and practices, or to render in popular form the arcane language and organisation of politics and commerce. The paper concludes with a critique of the use of metaphor where it results in a misleading representation of the social world, in this case through the media exploitation of inappropriate and romanticised sporting mythology.