Stavridou, Anastasia (2022) Challenging traditional understandings of leadership and followership through discourse : a sociolinguistic case study of a basketball team. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

The study of leadership has attracted scholarly attention for decades and has been studied from various disciplines and analytical approaches; yet leadership remains an ambiguous concept. Moving away from position-based approaches to leadership, which are linked with individuals in hierarchical positions, this PhD project investigates the performance of leadership and followership practices in a UK university-level basketball team with no officially assigned coach. Through this case study analysis, leadership and followership are understood as discursive and collaborative constructs which various members of the team can enact, provided that they contribute to the accomplishment of the team’s goals.

Adopting an ethnographic design and using qualitative techniques, the study unpacks the discursive construction of leadership and followership practices during the team’s time-out interactions (i.e., the 60-seconds halt in the game which allows coaches to communicate with the team). The data, comprising more than 110 hours of video recordings and 7 semi-structured interviews, is analysed using the tools of Interactional Sociolinguistics.

Taking as a reference point previous critical approaches which challenge heroic notions of leadership, this study questions the notion of normalised leader-follower distinctions commonly found in sports literature and concludes that leadership and followership are ambiguous practices which are realised through discourse and are, in many cases, independent of hierarchy. While players make leadership claims, they are often engaged in followership activities too, illustrating that these concepts are more nuanced and often performed interchangeably. Contrary to psychological studies, followership is also understood as a discursive accomplishment rather than as the acceptance of the influence or the leadership of others. Consequently, the study contributes to ongoing theoretical debates about leadership and followership while adding to the current, rather limited, sociolinguistic body of literature about discursive leadership and followership in the world of sports.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Sociolinguistics, Leadership, Followership, Basketball teams, Teamwork (Sports)
Official Date:	21 June 2022
Dates:	Date Event 21 June 2022 Completion
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Applied Linguistics
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Schnurr, Stephanie, 1975- ; File, Kieran
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	284 leaves : photographs
Language:	eng

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