| Abstract: |
Football coverage in newspapers is both an arena for and a mirror of political
discourse within a society. The paper argues that discourses within football
coverage referring to political issues reflect dominant – and, possibly,
contesting – “truths”, which themselves are linked to power relations and
political struggles within a given society. The compari-son of Côte d’Ivoire
and Ghana, two neighbouring countries in very different conditions
(particularly with regard to their historical trajectories and the degree of
societal consen-sus), and more particularly, the comparison of dominant
discourses on the topics of patri-otism, peace and good governance related to
the World Cup qualification of both national teams supports the hypothesis of
a strong context-relatedness of a politically loaded “foot-ball language”. For
instance, whereas in Ghana patriotism is, when football comes in, quickly
merged with pan-africanism, the Ivorian team renewed the heated political
debate about “Ivorianess” by putting forward a notion of inclusive patriotism. |