Title: ”It’s about mental factors” – Examining how a “winner’s mentality” is portrayed in Swedish sports mediaThis essay aims to explore what the Swedish sports media means when it discusses the term of a “winner’s mentality”, through a discourse analysis. More specifically this essay studies how the language in nine different sports papers in Sweden construes the meaning of the word by combining it with different signs and through the use of metaphors, a commonly used linguistic trick in Sportugese. The articles selected for analysis were all published in a one month span between the 8th of December 2016 and the 8th of January 2017. This particular period of time was selected because it included the 2017 World Juniors in ice hockey, a tournament in which the Swedes have placed fourth three years in a row, and which sparked a debate in the Swedish sports press about the team’s “winner’s mentality”.The study found five major themes within the sports journalistic discourse. A major aspect was focusing on the athlete´s psychology, their self-confidence and their will to win. This closely resembles the discourse in popular psychology, more specifically self-help texts where the readers are encouraged to change through active will. Another major theme was that of a winning record. According to the sports press, if an athlete or a team wins more often than not than that proves they possess a “winner’s mentality” and helps them win in the future as well. The essay also found differences in “winner´s mentality” based on a cultural aspect. Swede’s ability to win was downplayed while Americans were praised for their unusually strong mental abilities. This is also found in Swedish self-help texts and might indicate a much larger discourse in national identity at work. The two last themes identified were the importance of experience, and also that a “winner´s mentality” could be affected by a large amount of external factors.Overall the study found that the discourse was in disagreement within itself. A “winner´s mentality” could mean plenty of different things, and in some cases actively opposes itself. Another finding was that the sports press rarely reflects on the meaning of the term and instead mostly uses it as a rhetoric weapon or to make a point across. This raises the question whether or not the term has an actual use within sports terminology and debate if it can be interpreted in many different ways.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-133841 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Pettersson, Felix |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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