The meaning of sport: Sociolinguistic analysis of sport and energy drink brands’ advertising messages

This article investigates a sign system in promotional campaigns for the 2 sport/energy-drink brands PowerAde and Monster Energy. More specifically, the paper examines advertising materials published on the British Web sites of the 2 drink brands. The media texts are analyzed using semiotics and critical discourse analysis. In so doing, the author attempts to identify the meaning of sport in different contexts and settings and to interpret ideological connotation embedded in the commercial discourse on sport. The PowerAde advertising presents the meaning of sport as controlled and calculated physical activities associated with high-performance sport. This articulation suggests an idealization of productive individuals, and this appears to be the reification of capitalist ideology through sport. Monster Energy advertising tends to endorse alternative sporting subculture emphasizing the aspects of fun and spectacle, but such endorsement is only validated within the boundaries of consumer culture. The author concludes that advertising involves communication practice through which the meaning of sport with some ideological connotations is continually constructed and disseminated to today’s wider society.