Pedagogical language games: Exploring coach-athlete (mis)communication in high-performance sports

Background: Language is an indispensable tool that enables pedagogues' knowledge transmission and learners' development (Vygotsky 1986), and its usage even affects one's future hierarchical position in society (Bernstein 1971). Nevertheless, superficial attention has been paid to language itself within the sports domain. The media has highlighted athletes' torment by criticising coaches' harsh expressions of yelling, mockery, insults and swearing. Existing sports literature has also demanded strict regulations and penalties to alter coaches' aggressive communication. However, little exploration has been conducted on why the use of violent language remains rampant and how it could be transformed into pedagogical ones.

Purpose and questions: Instead of following the dominant approach that rigorously restricts individual coaches' authority and autonomy, this study aims to emphasise the fundamental necessity of pedagogical language games between coaches and athletes. Drawing on Wittgenstein's (1953) concepts of language games, this project will address three research questions: (a) which private languages are used in coach-athlete interactions?; (b) how are individuals' linguistic meanings shared with each other through family resemblances (net of similarities among different languages)?; and (c) how are individual language games linked to the prevalent form of life in coaching communities?

Method: In order to comprehend the dynamics of coach-athlete language games (Wittgenstein 1953), this study adopts conversation analysis (CA) as its methodological tool (Psathas 1993). Since CA deems language to be an essential resource for building a social world (Seedhouse 2005; Ten Have 2004), it is effective in shedding light on how language games construct the realities and structures of coaching society (Cope et al. 2016; Groom, Cushion, and Nelson 2012).

Fields and participants: Using Johnson's (1961) characteristics-driven classification (speed, accuracy, form, and adaptability), five types of high-performance sports (swimming, golf, gymnastics, wrestling, and football) have been selected as research fields. A total of 30 participants (15 coaches and 15 adolescent athletes) will be recruited through snowball sampling (Patton 2015).

Data collection and analysis: To complement CA's limitations in addressing multi-sensory information (Groom et al. 2014) and in elucidating macroscopic phenomena such as hegemony and ideology (Hutchby and Woofftt 2008), this study will collect data through (a) observations based on body-mounted camcorders (GoPro7), (b) stimulated-recall-interviews, and (c) reflective drawing techniques. The data will be analysed by alternating CA's inductive fieldwork and Wittgenstein's deductive framework from multidimensional perspectives (micro-meso-macro).

Expected impacts: As an empirical investigation using body-mounted camcorders, this study is expected to (a) raise awareness of the importance of pedagogical language games in coaching society; (b) provide international sports agencies with practical implications of pedagogical language use that are currently absent from global coach-athlete curriculums (EPEU 2017; ICCE 2013); and (c) expand the existing understanding of coach-athlete communication by connecting it to Wittgenstein's language-game-related concepts of private languages, family resemblance, and form of life.