Scoring a hat trick: Nation, football, and critical discourse analysis

Abstract

Media sport constitutes a significant arena within which discourses about national identities are continually articulated (Blain et al. 1993). This study analyses the football commentaries of the matches in which the Greek national football team competed during Euro 2004. Its focus is on the discursive means that the sportscasters deployed with a view to constructing a national identity that promoted unification and solidarity amongst the audience. In parallel, it explores how the representatives of this national collectivity, i.e., the footballers, their coach and the fans, were depicted. Adopting a discourse-historical framework (Reisigl and Wodak 2001, Wodak et al. 1999), it becomes evident that the sportscasters show great support for their home team forging points of identification with the audience (Blain et al. 1993). In doing so, they confirm the ideological power that media sport has in generating, reinforcing and disseminating national identities.