Olympism and its Values in Institutional Texts and Their Circulation in Social Networks

Abstract

This article focuses on discourses dealing with sport (political, institutional, Olympic, etc.) as well as discourses coming from sport experiences (forums, social networks and applications dedicated to sport), in order to question the Olympism and its values and the way they are put into discourse and polarized. The corpus is composed of major institutional texts (mainly charters and codes). Its study is completed by the analysis of a second corpus comprising "posts" disseminated on sports forums and social networks as well as publications relating to the Strava community. We describe how the texts governing Olympism formulate an instituting topique, and how the meaning of values evolves through discursive actualization, in contexts referring to the practice of amateur sport. In particular, we examine Respect, Friendship and Excellence (the three core values claimed by the Olympic movement) and their links with other values (peace between peoples, equality, solidarity, integrity). The discursive analysis in situ allows us to identify the reconfiguration of these fundamentals in the digital practices of amateurs, around fair play, performance, and more generally what is understood by "sport values".