Covert racial stereotyping in the language of football: A Critical Discourse Analysis of online reporting

This study explores to what extent racial stereotyping of footballers in the English game exists in mainstream online media reports. The research is conducted against the background of an increase in the number of racist attacks/abuse on current BAME football players in the UK, and the intervention by one of the highest-profile football players in England, Raheem Sterling, who recently suggested that newspapers may help to 'fuel racism' in their reporting on the game. Over 20 years ago, McCarthy and Jones (1997) argued that 'evidence of covert racial stereotyping was found' in TV commentators' language and in particular when they described the following three categories: players' performance, their physicality, and their psychology. With these three categories in mind, the current study explores whether covert, and indeed overt, racial stereotyping still exists in mainstream online match reports, match reviews and opinion pieces. In order to do this, and adopting a Critical Discourse Analysis approach (Fairclough, 2010; Wodak, 2004), this presentation shares initial findings from a corpus of football on the first genre, match reports, from the 2019-20 Premier League season taken from a selection of online media outlets.