But the subject here is not the similarity between sports and
language, but rather their interrelation. The obvious entry point
is to notice that we use language to describe the practical
experience of sport and to assign meaning to it. As obvious as
this is, it is also misleading in the sense that it suggests
that sports would not be possible without language-an idea
implicit in the ideal of literacy. In ages when written language
emerged, sporting events become part of social life. Visual
representation (such as petroglyphs and the later
hieroglyphics), while not exactly a statement about the
awareness of exercise, contain enough elements to confirm that
not only immediate, purposeful physical activity (running after
a wild animal, for instance) and the exercise and maintenance of
the physical were, at least indirectly, acknowledged. Testimony
to the effect that at a certain moment in time the community
started providing for the physically talented-in the tombs of
the Egyptian Pharaoh Beni Hasan the whole gamut of wrestling is
documented in detail-helps us understand that labor division and
increased efficiency are in a relation that goes far beyond cause
and effect. The specialization, which probably started at that
time, resulted not just from the availability of resources, but
also from the willingness to allocate them in ways that make the
sports experience possible because a certain necessity was
acknowledged.
The pattern of kicking a ball in kemari and the pattern of
language use in the same culture are not directly connected.
Nevertheless, the game has a configurational nature: the aim is
to maintain the ball in the air for as long as possible. Soccer,
even football, are sequential: the aim is to score higher than
the opposing team. In the first case, the field is marked by
four different trees: willow, cherry, pine, and maple. In the
second, it is marked by artificial boundaries outside of which
the game rules become meaningless. The languages of the cultures
in which such games appeared are characterized by different
structures that correspond to very different practical
experiences. The logic embodied in each language system affects,
in turn, the logic of the sports experience. Kemari is not only
non-predicative and configurational, but also infused by the
principle of amé, in which things are seen as deeply
interdependent. Soccer and football are analytical, games of
planning, texts whose final point is the goal or the touchdown.
No surprise then, that mentality, as a form of expressing the
influence of practical experience in some patterned expectation,
plays a role, too.
There are many extremely individualistic forms of competition,
and others of collective effort. While in today's global market
mentality plays a different role than in the past, it still
affects sports in its non-standard form. These and other
differences are relevant to understanding how different
practical experiences constitute different instances of human
objectification, sports being one of these. Even when the sports
instance is disconnected from the experience that made it
necessary, it is still affected by all the structural elements
that define the pragmatic context. Indeed, while there is a
permanency to sports-involvement of the human body-there is also
a large degree of variation corresponding to successive
pragmatic circumstances.
Sport is also a means of expression. During the action, it
externalizes physical capabilities, but also intellectual
qualities: self-control, coordination, planning. Initially,
physical performance complemented rudimentary language.
Afterwards the two took different paths, without actually ever
separating entirely (as the Greek Olympics fully document). When
language reached some of its relative limits, expression through
sports substituted for it: not even the highest literate
expression could capture the drama of competition, the tragedy
of failure, or the sublimity of victory. But more interesting is
what language extracted from the experience of sports. Language
captured characteristics of the sports experience and generalized
them. Through language, they were submitted, in a new form, to
experiences very different from sports: sports for warfare,
athletics for instilling a sense of order, competitions as circus
for the masses. But primarily, people derived from sports the
notion of competitiveness, accepted as a national
characteristic, as well as a characteristic of education, of art,
of the market.
Rationalized in language, the notion of competition introduces
the experience of comparing, later of measuring, and thus opens
the door to the bureaucracy of sports and the institutionalized
aspects we today take for granted. Greeks cared for the winner.
Time-keeping devices were applied to sports later, more
precisely at the time when keeping records became relevant
within the broader pragmatics of documentary ownership and
inheritance. While playing does not require language, writing
helped in establishing uniform rules that eventually defined
games. The institution of playing, represented by organized
competitions, is the result of the institution of literacy, and
reflects pragmatic expectations pertinent to literacy.
In every sports experience, there is a romantic notion of nature
and freedom, reminiscent of the experience of hunting, fishing,
and foraging. But at the same time, sports experiences testify
to changes in the condition of human beings as they relate to
the natural environment, their natural condition, social
environment, and the artificial world resulting from human
practice. Target shooting, or, more recently, Nintendo-type
aiming with laser beams, is at the other end of the gamut. The
circumstances of human experience that made literacy necessary
affected the status of the sports experience as well. The
contest became a product with a particular status; the prize
reflects the sign process through which competition is
evaluated.
Allen Guttman distinguished several characteristics of modern
sports: secularism, equality of opportunity, specialization of
roles, rationalization, bureaucratic organization,
quantification, and quest for records. What he failed to
acknowledge is that such characteristics are not relevant unless
considered in connection to the recurrent patterns of sports
seen against the background of the general pragmatic framework.
Once we make such connections, we notice that efficiency is more
important than the so-called equality of opportunity,
quantification, and bureaucratic organization. The quest for
efficiency appropriate to the new scale of humankind is exactly
what today affects literacy's degree of necessity.
The quest for efficiency in sports becomes evident when we
compare the changes from the very sophisticated, indeed obscure,
rules governing sports performances in ritualistic cultures
(Indian, Chinese, Mayan, Apache) with the tendency to simplify
these rules and make the sports experience as transparent as
possible. When certain African tribes adopted the modern game of
soccer, they placed it in the context of their rituals. The
entire set of premises on which the game is based, and which
pertain to a culture so different from that of the African
tribes, was actually dismissed, and premises of a different
nature were attached as a frame for the adopted game.
Consequently, the Inyanga (witch-doctor) became responsible for
the outcome; the team and supporters had to spend the night
before the game together around a campfire; goats were
sacrificed. In such instances, the ceremony, not the game, is the
recurrent pattern; winning or losing is of secondary importance.
Once such tribes entered literate civilization, the utilitarian
aspect became dominant. If we take European soccer and extend it
to the American game of football, we can understand how new
patterns are established according to conditions of human
practice of a different structural nature. This discussion
cannot be limited to the symbolism of the two games, or of any
other sport. The attached meaning corresponds to the interpreted
practical experience and does not properly substitute for the
recurrent patterns which actually constitute the experience as a
projection of the humans involved.
What is of interest here is that literacy was a powerful
instrument for structuring practical experiences, such as sports
(among others), in the framework of a dynamics of interaction
specific to industrial society. As the cradle of the industrial
age, England is also the place where many sports and experiences
associated with physical exercise started. But once the dynamics
changed, some of the developments that the Industrial Revolution
made necessary became obsolete. An example is national isolation.
Literacy is an instrument of national distinction. By their
nature, sports experiences are, or should be, above and beyond
artificial national boundaries. Still, as past experiences show
(the 1936 Olympics in Berlin was only the climax) and current
experiences confirm (national obsession with medals in more
recent Olympics), sports in the civilization of literacy, like
many other practical experiences, is tainted by nationalism.
Competition often degenerates into an adversarial relation and
conflict. In the physical exercises of ancient Greece, China, or
India, performance was not measured. The patterns were those of
physical harmony, not of comparison; of aesthetics, not of
functionality. In England, sports became an institution, and
performance entered into the record books. Indeed, in England,
the history of competitions was written to justify why sports
were for the upper, educated classes, and should be kept for
amateurs willing to enjoy victory as a reward.
Some games were invented in the environment of the civilization
of literacy and meant to accomplish functions similar to those
fulfilled by literacy. They changed as the conditions of the
practice of literacy changed, and became more and more an
expression of the new civilization of more languages of a limited
domain. In the information age, where much of language is
substituted by other means of expression, sports are an
experience that results primarily in generating data. For someone
attracted by the beauty of a tennis game, the speed of a serve is
of secondary relevance. But after a while, one realizes that
tennis has changed from its literate condition to a condition in
which victory means obliteration of the game. A very strong and
fast serve transforms the game into a ledger of hits and misses.
Quite similar is the dynamics of baseball, football, basketball,
and hockey, all generators of statistics in which the experts
find more enjoyment than from the actual event. The dynamics of
changes in the nature and purpose of sports is related to what
makes the sports experience today another instance in the
process of diversification of languages and the demotion of the
necessity of literacy.