‘Sport’ in Germany – from an ontological category to a concept of current times

Abstract

The German and English linguistic zones have a great variety of definitions when referring to the concept of sport (Willimczik, 2001). However, the question of the linguisticphilosophic grounds on which this argument is based remains open. In addition, the perspective of both sociological observations and empirical-inductive analysis, accepts the coexistence of different sports models (Rittner, 1984) but fails to provide an available justification or theoretical basis for this. On a linguistic-philosophical basis, this article empirically reviews the scientific empirical model of prototypes, taking as a starting point the analysis of Wittgenstein’s family resemblance: 1. to what extent is sport a concept of family resemblance in Wittgenstein’s sense, and what relations of similarity exist in the concepts of work, art, play and health care; 2. what models of sport exist in ordinary language; and 3. what resemblance different sports models have with the concepts of work, art, play and health care? The results show that the concept of sport is not clearly defined in the sense of a family resemblance, but rather that its frontiers are quite frayed. However, it possesses a significant nucleus directed at high performance sport. Six models of sport could be defined as prototypes: traditional sport, professional high performance sport, hobbies close to sport, exhibition sport, experience sport and sport for health.