Intersections and differentiations: a corpus-assisted discourse study of gender representations in the British press before, during and after the London Olympics 2012

Jaworska, S. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7465-2245 and Hunt, S. (2017) Intersections and differentiations: a corpus-assisted discourse study of gender representations in the British press before, during and after the London Olympics 2012. Gender and Language, 11 (3). pp. 336-364. ISSN 1747-633X doi: 10.1558/genl.28858

Abstract/Summary

This study examines the impact of a global sports event on gender representations in media reporting. Whereas previous research on gender, sport and media has been mainly concerned with sports events in the North American or Australian context, this study investigates the British media reporting before, during and after the London Olympics 2012. Our study follows the approach of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) and uses both quantitative and qualitative research procedures. The results reveal more balanced gender representations during the London Olympics in that the ‘regular’ biased associations were supressed in favour of positive references to female achievements. However, little carry-though of the ‘gains’ was noted. Also, this study shows that the positive associations intersected with national sentiments and were used to celebrate the nation-state. At the same time, some subtle resistance was observed to accepting as ‘truly’ British the non-white athletes and those not born in Britain.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/56337
Identification Number/DOI	10.1558/genl.28858
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Literacy and Multilingualism (CeLM) Arts, Humanities and Social Science > School of Literature and Languages > English Language and Applied Linguistics Arts, Humanities and Social Science > Language Text and Power
Uncontrolled Keywords	gender, language, sport, media, corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, intersections, nationalism, London Olympics
Publisher	International Gender and Language Association
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