Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Popular Culture, Voice and Linguistic Diversity pp 111–137Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Transglossia and Sports: Men Talk and Masculinity

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 573 Accesses

Part of the book series: Language and Globalization ((LAGL))

Abstract

This chapter shows how sports represent a major part of many young people’s daily linguistic lives. From young Bangladeshis’ fascination with Indian cricket stars to young Mongolia students’ use of terms from Japanese sumo, these affiliations have both cultural and linguistic implications. While young speakers actively support their favourite sports’ team or athletes, they also relocalize varied sports-associated linguistic and semiotic resources as a means of self-identification and peer-bonding. Sport in the contexts of Bangladesh and Mongolia is often bound up with young men’s daily activities, with implications for particular performances of masculinity. Young males engage with varied sports-associated linguistic and semiotic resources as part of their gendered and group solidarities. The transglossic take-up of sports thus becomes a key site for the production of a linguistic and cultural matrix of masculine and group identity.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

eBook
USD   19.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   29.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  • Andersen, E. (2014). Speaking with style: The sociolinguistics skills of children.  New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bakhtin, M. (1986). Speech genres and other late essays (V. McGee, C. Emerson & M. Holquist Trans.). Austin: University of Texas Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bandyopadhyay, K. (2013). Cricket as nationalist obsession: ICC World Cup 2011 and Bangladesh as a host nation. Sport in Society, 16(1), 19–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Booth, G. D. (1995). Traditional content and narrative structure in the Hindi commercial cinema. Asian Folklore Studies, 54(2), 169–190.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crabbe, T., & Wagg, S. (2000). ‘A carnival of cricket?’: The cricket world cup, ‘race’ and the politics of carnival. Culture, Sport Society, 3(2), 70–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dasgupta, S. (2007). Bangladesh cricket: Scoring on passion, but little else. Sport in Society, 10(1), 162–181.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Davis, N. W., & Duncan, M. C. (2006). Sports knowledge is power reinforcing: Masculine privilege through fantasy sport league participation. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 30(3), 244–264.

    Google Scholar 

  • del Percio, A. (2015). New speakers on lost ground in the football stadium. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(2), 261–280.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • del Percio, A., & Duchêne, A. (2011). Commodification of pride and resistance to profit. In A. Duchêne & M. Heller (Eds.), Language in late capitalism (pp. 43–73). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dovchin, S. (2015). Language, multiple authenticities and social media: The online language practices of university students in Mongolia. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 19(4), 437–459.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dovchin, S., Sultana, S., & Pennycook, A. (2015). Relocalizing the translingual practices of young adults in Mongolia and Bangladesh. Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts, 1(1), 4–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Drange, E.-M. D., Hasund, I. K., & Stenström, A.-B. (2014). “Your mum!” Teenagers’ swearing by mother in English, Spanish and Norwegian. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 19(1), 29–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fenton, S. (2007). Indifference towards national identity: What young adults think about being English and British. Nations and Nationalism, 13(2), 321–339.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gemmell, J. (2007). Cricket, race and the 2007 World Cup. Sport in Society, 10(1), 1–10.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giulianotti, R., & Robertson, R. (2009). Globalization and football. London: SAGE.

    Google Scholar 

  • Härstad, S. (2010). Performing “dangerousness” linguistically: The case of the “bad Norwegian” on the streets of Trondheim. In J. N. Jørgensen (Ed.), Love Ya Hate Ya: The sociolinguistic study of youth language and youth identities (pp. 249–265). Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartmann, D. (2003). The sanctity of Sunday football: Why men love sports. Contexts, 2(4), 13–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hasan, S. M., & Rahaman, A. (2014). Standard dialect ideology in Bangladesh: A field study. Language in India, 14(10), 184–197.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hindustan Times. (2012, October 04). Amitabh Bachchan: Legend at 70: Amitabh Bachchan’s most memorable dialogues. Retrieved July 12, 2013, from http://www.hindustantimes.com/Specials/Entertainment/BigBBday/Chunk-HT-UI-BigBBday-TopStories/TOP-50-Amitabh-Bachchan-s-most-memorable-dialogues/SP-Article10-939781.aspx.

  • Higgins, C. (2009a). English as a local language: Post-colonial identities and multilingual practices. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

    Google Scholar 

  • Higgins, C. (2009b). From Da Bomb to Bomba. In S. Alim, A. Ibrahim, & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Global linguistic flows: Hip Hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language (pp. 95–112). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ibrahim, A. (2003). Marking the unmarked: Hip-hop, the gaze and the African body in North America. Critical Arts, 17(1–2), 52–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jay, T. (2009). The utility and ubiquity of taboo words. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 153–161.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kiesling, S. F. (1998). Men’s identities and sociolinguistic variation: The case of fraternity men. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2(1), 69–99.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kiesling, S. F. (2005). Homosocial desire in men’s talk: Balancing and re-creating cultural discourses of masculinity. Language in Society, 34(5), 695–726.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kimmel, M. S., & Aronson, A. (2004). Men and masculinities: A social, cultural, and historical encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kytölä, S. (2012). Peer normativity and sanctioning of linguistic resources-in-use on non-standard Englishes in Finnish football forums online. In J. Blommaert, S. Leppänen, P. Pahti & T. Räisänen (Eds.), Dangerous multilingualism: Northern perspectives on order, purity and normality (pp. 228–260). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kytölä, S., & Westinen, E. (2015). “I be da reel gansta”—A finnish footballer’s Twitter writing and metapragmatic evaluations of authenticity. Discourse, Context and Media, 8, 6–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lavric, E., Pisek, G., Skinner, A., & Stadler, W. (Eds.). (2008). The linguistics of football. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leppänen, S., & Piirainen-Marsh, A. (2009). Language policy in the making: An analysis of bilingual gaming activities. Language Policy, 8(3), 261–284.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leppänen, S., Pitkänen-Huhta, A., Piirainen-Marsh, A., Nikula, T., & Peuronen, S. (2009). Young people’s translocal new media uses: A multiperspective analysis of language choice and heteroglossia. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(4), 1080–1107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Llopis Goig, R. (2008). Learning and representation: The construction of masculinity in football. An analysis of the situation in Spain. Sport in Society, 11(6), 685–695.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meân, L. (2001). Identity and discursive practice: Doing gender on the football pitch. Discourse and Society, 12(6), 789–815.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Melnick, M. J., & Wann, D. L. (2004). Sport fandom influences, interests, and behaviors among Norwegian university students. International Sports Journal, 8(1), 1–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pennycook, A. (2007). ‘The rotation gets thick. The constraints get thin’: Creativity, recontextualization, and difference. Applied Linguistics, 28(4), 579–596.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pennycook, A. (2012). Language and mobility: Unexpected places. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peuronen, S. (2011). “Ride hard, live forever”: Translocal identities in an online community of extreme sports Christians. In C. Thurlow & K. Mroczek (Eds.), Digital discourse: Language in the new media (pp. 154–196). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Pujolar, J. C. (2001). Gender, Heteroglossia and Power: A sociolinguistics study of youth culture. New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roth-Gordon, J. (2009). Conversational sampling, race trafficking, and the invocation of the Gueto in Brazilian Hip Hop. In S. Alim, A. Ibrahim, & A. Pennycook (Eds.), Global linguistic flows, Hip Hop cultures, youth identities, and the politics of language (pp. 63–79). New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seargeant, P., Erling, E. J., Solly, M., Chowdhury, Q. H., & Rahman, S. (2016). Analysing perceptions of English in rural Bangladesh. World Englishes. doi:10.1111/weng.12215.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sultana, S. (2012). Problematising popular discourses about language and identity of young adults in Bangladesh. 3L: The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 18(4), 49–63.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sultana, S. (2013). Transglossic language practices: Young adults transgressing language and identity in Bangladesh. Ph.D. diss. University of Technology, Sydney (UTS).

    Google Scholar 

  • Sultana, S. (2014). Young adults’ linguistic manipulation of English in Bangla in Bangladesh. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 17(1), 74–89.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sultana, S., Dovchin, S., & Pennycook, A. (2015). Transglossic language practices of young adults in Bangladesh and Mongolia. International Journal of Multilingualism, 12(1), 93–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tagg, C. (2016). Heteroglossia in text-messaging: Performing identity and negotiating relationships in a digital space. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 20(1), 59–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zucal, J. A. G. (2015). Use and representations of the body among police officers in the province of Buenos Aires. In G. Melville & C. Ruta (Eds.), Thinking the body as a basis, provocation and burden of life: Studies in intercultural and historical contexts (pp. 235–250). Oldenbourg: de Gruyter Mouton.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Language Research, University of Aizu, Tsuruga, Japan

    Sender Dovchin

  2. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

    Alastair Pennycook

  3. Department of English Language, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Shaila Sultana

Authors
  1. Sender Dovchin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alastair Pennycook
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Shaila Sultana
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sender Dovchin .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Dovchin, S., Pennycook, A., Sultana, S. (2018). Transglossia and Sports: Men Talk and Masculinity. In: Popular Culture, Voice and Linguistic Diversity. Language and Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61955-2_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61955-2_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61954-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61955-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation