1 HOCKEY TALK: ACCOUNTING for WINNING and LOSING Robert M

1 HOCKEY TALK: ACCOUNTING FOR WINNING AND LOSING Robert M. Seiler It can be argued (Emmison, 1988, p. 233) that winning and losing at sporting events have quite different consequences for the interaction of the athletes and the sportscasters. Two presup- positions are at work here. The first is that winning represents the logical outcome of hard work and dedication, together with a bit of luck. The second is that winning is all that matters.1 The corollary to this is that losing represents a breach of "the sporting order" (Emmison, 1988, p. 233). This means that defeat is problematic. Some sort of account must be produced when preparations go astray.2 In this paper I examine the linguistic manoeuvers that are employed by athletes and sportscasters in managing accounts of winning and losing during those ritualized exchanges that feature so prominently these days in the media's coverage of sports. I base my observations on recordings I made of celebrity interviews that were aired on radio and television during one National Hockey League (NHL) season. I would argue that hockey, like baseball or football, serves as an ideal microcosm for studying the interactional organization of victory and defeat. The early work of Erving Goffman (1959, 1961, 1967) provides an impetus for what follows. I will begin my report with a brief outline of the conceptual framework Goffman developed for exploring the ritual organization of interaction. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Goffman's early work (cf. Strong, 1988, p. 231) can be read as an elaboration of the following statement: T~~ vi~ility of the t micro-social order depends upon the ceremonial order of face-to- ~ ~- -- 2 face interaction.3 In other words, in specifying this set of events and that set of roles, we constitute (Goffman, 1961, pp. 26-27) the rules of the qame which,4 when adhered to, produce a plane of being, an engine of meaning, a world unto itself, be it a medical consultation or a celebrity interview. According to Goffman, the process of sustaining "a definition of the situation" (Goffman, 1961, pp. 30-31) or sharing "a focus of att~~ion" (Collins, 1988, p. 47) is organized according to the rules of relevance and irrelevance. These rules (for managing face-to-face interaction) appear to be (Goffman, 1961, p. 80) "a matter of courtesy, manner, and etiquette." It is to these flimsy (as Goffman calls them) rules, and not to the unstable character of the external world, that participants owe their sense of what is real and what is not. Together, the interactants (Goffman, 1959, pp. 9-10) contribute to a single, over-all definition of the situation which involves an agreement as to whose claims concerning what issues will be honored for the moment. The participants generally agree on the desirability of avoiding an open conflict of definitions of the situation.5 What constraints shape the face-to-face interaction of athletes and sportscasters during celebrity interviews? The answer to this question can be found in Anita Pomerantz's (1978) study of the organization of the responses people make to the compliments they receive in everyday conversation. What fascinated Pomerantz was a problem most of us encounter at one time or another, i.e., accepting compliments with grace. We all know that compliments are regularly rejected, downgraded, and accepted with qualifications. Well, Pomerantz desc~ibed the --~- ~--~~~ 3 organization that accounted for this phenomenon. Pomerantz tells us that two quite different systems of constraint affect the production of compliment responses. According to the first, recipients are expected to respond positively to a prior speaker's assessment or evaluation of a state of affairs, including the ceremonial bestowal of praise. According to the second, speakers are expected to minimize self- praise. Speakers as well as hearers (Pomerantz, 1978) treat self-praise as a violation of proper discourse. Responses to compliments have to be organized in ways which limit the extent to which recipients praise themselves whilst simultaneously restricting the scope of explicit disagreement with the initial speaker (Pomerantz, 1978, p. 88). Two broad classes of compliment response solutions to these problems can be distinguished. Accordi~g to the first, evaluation shifts, the praise received is down-graded. These responses range from scaled-down agreements to outright disagreements. Scaled-down agreements exhibit agreement and disagreement features. Nevertheless, self-praise is avoided. Disagreement responses are made as qualifications of a prior compliment. Obviously, outright rejection is avoided. According to the second, referent shifts, the praise is either re-assigned to a referent other-than-self or alternatively a return compliment is produced. Agreement with the appropriateness of the compliment is thus displayed. While the target of the credit is negotiated, the level of intensity is not. The referent can be a co-participant in the setting or some material object, such as the facilities. A return compliment may - ~ 4 well be cast in the form of an agreement. A case in point is the compliment which terminates extended praise sequences. I would argue that these "solution types" represent the rules of relevance and irrelevance for the interactional setting under consideration. THE ORGANIZATION OF CEREMONIAL DISCOURSE This is not the place to disucss the packaging of spectator sports as spectacles for mass consumption.6 Suffice it to say here that the celebrity interview has enormous entertainment value.7 First, it focuses attention on the individuals involved in the contest. Second, it creates the illusion that celebrities share "inside" information, in terms of strategies, team strengths and weaknesses, and locker room gossip (Snyder and Spreitzer, 1989). The data for my study--40 interviews or 121.01 mins. of hockey talk--derive from the audio tapes I made of celebrity interviews that were conducted during the 1989-90 NHL season, including the Stanley Cup playoffs.8 The NHL respresents (Gallmeier, 1989, p. 28) the pinnacle of success for professional hockey players. I take as my point of departure Michael Mulkay's (1984) conversation analytic study of the discourse of the Nobel Prize Ceremony. Awarding the Nobel Price can be understood as "the ultimate compliment.,,9 The evidence suggests that the structures which organize ordinary compliment response sequences (Pomerantz, 1978) also organize ceremonial discourses generally. My study differs from Mulkay's ina number of respects. For ~. one thing, Mulkay based his study on published transcripts. I ~-- ~ ~-~ 5 based my study on actual exchanges that took place between competitors and broadcasters before, during the breaks in, and after games. For another, the Laureates were physically and temporally removed from their work settings. Almost all the exchanges in my study took place in a studio adjacent to the field of play, i.e., the "rink." The interactional encounters under consideration can be characterized in the following way. The interviewee (IE) has just completed a physically and mentally demanding performance. As far as he is concerned, he is "off- stage." His "event" is over for the moment. By contrast, the interviewer (IR) has participated in the event only as a spectator or a commentator. For the IR, the ceremony represents the beginning of the performance. The IR determines the success or the failure of the ceremonial interaction. It should be remembered that the ceremonial exchanges which comprise the celebrity interview serve to celebrate winning. Broadcasters routinely "salute" the three stars of the game and whenever they can they conclude their coverage with an interview with the first star. Finally, the IR controls (Emmison, 1987, p. 97) the form of response sequences by means of such devices as opening remarks, tag questions, accounts of the contest, and so on. The IR's opening utterance is usually an adjacency pair, the bestowal of congratulations being the first pair part. In some instances, the IR's initial utterance extends beyond the simple proffering of praise to include an account of the event, which highlights some matters and ignores others. In others, the IR prods competitors who appear reticent or inconclusive, so that a more ~ - ---- 6 controversial account can be produced for the audience. MANAGING ACCOUNTS OF WINNING The evidence suggests that winners organize their accounts to satisfy two constraints, i.e., the need to agree with the IR's assessment of the competition and the need to avoid or to minimize self-praise. The organizational features of the "solutions" to this problem vary from IE to IE, depending upon local particulars. Two kinds of shifts are routinely employed, i.e., evaluation shifts and referent shifts. By means of these linguistic manoeuvers the celebratory mood of the interaction is reaffirmed. First, winners downqrade the praise they receive by using one or more of the following response types. a. Recallinq their own unsatisfactory perfQ~mances. In the example that follows the IE (Wayne Gretzky) tells the IR (Ron MacLean) about the Los Angeles Kings's huge win over the Quebec Nordiques. In this exchange, the IE hearably downgrades (see 11. 18-25) the Kings's poor defensive play, which had been responsible for many of their loses, including their over-time loss to the Edmonton Oilers three nights before. In the game under consideration, the Kings's goaltender (Kelly Hrudey) faced 38 shots, whereas the Nordiques's goaltender (Ron Tugnutt) faced only 27 shots. The strategy

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