Sosiaalisten ongelmien retoriikkaa: Tapaus doping

• Ville Virsu

Abstrakti

Rhetorci in discussing social problems: The case of doping (englanti)

3/2007 (111)

Rhetoric in discussing social problems: The case of doping

The writer employs the tools of rhetorical analysis to examine texts in which doping is constructed as a social problem in Finnish society. Using this approach based on the constructionist research tradition, the writer examines rhetorical accounts and ways of conveying meaning which define the target phenomenon. The study data comprises all texts dealing with the subject of doping that appeared in three major daily newspapers (Aamulehti, Helsingin Sanomat and Turun Sanomat) during the period 19 February to 5 March 2001 (excluding the letters pages).

The article first discusses the characteristic features of sports journalism and the generic conventions used in talking about doping, i.e. the sociocultural context in which the doping debate takes place. Special attention is given to particular opposing views and tensions reoccurring in the texts, such as the rhetorical contrast produced between clean sport and the doping world or constructions alluding to the former GDR, and to how these contrastive positions are repeatedly renewed and exploited. The writer then looks more closely at the rhetorical means with which speakers and the public at large are referred to in the texts. For those producing the texts, these identities constructed for individuals and groups constitute rhetorical resources, and these resources are used, adapted and alternated to assemble arguments and texts that are as convincing as possible in the given speech situation. Value is conferred on the group constructions that emerge, which focus on the sports elite and the general public who follows sports, or on the positions of speakers characterised as Finns and armchair sports fans, and these group constructions are used in different ways. For the most part, the speakers identify with what is being positively valued or present it as their own reference group, and disassociate themselves from what is negatively valued, at the same time inviting or imploring readers to share in this position and self-categorisation. Finally, consideration is given to the various discourses and interpretive frameworks used in the doping debate by identifying the viewpoints, themes and principles of argumentation used by those who set out to define the doping problem. From this standpoint the writer concludes that the doping debate is characterised especially by an approach appealing to Finnishness and the nations collective experience, and by financial, health and moral discourses, a discourse criticising the artificiality of sport, and by talking in a way that infers the need for a legal redefinition of doping.

There are many different discourses present in the doping debate, and so each speakers room for manoeuvre is quite considerable. In analysing the data, the writer attempts to bring together the theoretical perspective of social constructionism and the methods of linguistic analysis, and thus to demonstrate the benefits that arise or could arise from the use of this approach.

Ville Virsu