Framing the shot: tracing the dialectical development of sports discourse in India through advertising images

Abstract

This paper defines the category of the sports image ad in contradistinction to the sports narrative ad. Image ads, unlike narrative ads, are characterised by the use of sports images without employing spatio-temporal logic and sequentiality. After engaging in a brief discussion of the term image, the paper focuses on a structuralist study of the images employed in sports image ads on Indian television, and subjects them to rigorous semantic and syntactic analysis, using numerous examples, in order to extract the implications these images have for Indian sports discourse. It also undertakes a historical analysis of the changes that sports images have undergone over time in order to trace the changes in sports discourse in India since the advent of television in the 1980s.

Disclosure statement

This is to acknowledge that no financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct application of this research.

Notes

[1] Sports discourse refers to the dominant meanings and values associated with sport at any given time and in tracing its evolution this paper attempts to trace the changes over a specific time period in the associations and implications of sport.

[2] It is important to establish here that for the purposes of this project a ‘sports ad’ is an ad that has sports in its content and it does not include ads which are telecast during sporting events. This distinction is necessary because the focus is on what the ads are saying (ad as text) and not when they are saying it or at whom they are directed.

[3] This number comes from a sports ad archive created by the author after sifting through TV Ad Indx which hosts an online ad bank containing over 3 million Indian and international television commercials, press ads and marketing news.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sonal Jha

Sonal Jha is an assistant professor of English at the Department of Liberal Arts, Indian Institute of Technology Bhilai, India. Her primary domain of work is cultural studies, specifically focused on popular culture, even as her academic grounding is in the field of literature. She has published in several reputed international journals, such as South Asian Popular Culture, Sport in Society and South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies.