Kutte Jönsson
Dept. of Sport Sciences, Malmö University
Based on six filmed training sessions in three different sports (jujutsu, gymnastics and athletics), this article analyzes what kind of athletic subjects coaches build through their speech acts. I try to show that in relatively casual training situations, in this case training aimed at children and adolescents, there are leadership philosophies that resylt in different types of athletes being constructed through language. The study thus rests on the premise that coaches’ language usage, or speech acts, is an essential part of the construction of the athletic subject. One of the conclusions I draw from this investigation is that it seems that every sport creates its own universe, more or less similar to the world in general, and that it is the speech acts of the coaches who have the intrinsic capacity to open spaces for their adepts, rooms where dreams and insights about constraints coexist.
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KUTTE JÖNSSON is a lecturer in sport sciences with a focus on philosophy at Malmö University, and also the scientific editor of the Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum. He has written several books, and has also contributed to several international anthologies and scholarly journals, such as Sports, Ethics and Philosophy and Sport in Society.
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