The “fresh talk” of adapted sport athletes^*

* This research was carried out within the framework of a convention of scientific collaboration (2013–2016) between the Santesih (EA 4614) laboratory and the ‘Study and Research’ commission of the French Federation for Adapted Sport and with the financial support of the FFSA. The analyses presented in this article do not necessarily reflect the FFSA's point of view.

Abstract

The French Federation for Adapted Sport develops and organizes sports for people referred to as having a mental or psychic disability. Since 2009, the elite athletes of this federation have been recognized as top-level athletes by the Ministry of Sports and re-integrated into the paralympic movement. In this article, we have identified and confronted two levels in the language used for these athletes’ experience. One of them, conceptual, was mainly used by the managing staff of the Pôle France (French structures for elite athletes), even if the athletes themselves may also use it. This language, stemming from public policies on disability and widely used in the medico-social field, seemed too vague and devoid of any value for classification, compared with another language, mostly improvised and largely unexpected, voiced by the athletes. These other words, which we liken to the notion of ‘fresh talk’, coined by Goffman, were directly linked to the athletes’ lives. They delivered these athletes’ experiences and were contradictory, if not a refinement, of certain major categories of the medico-social action (or those of the sporting world), such as ‘autonomy’, ‘inclusion’ or ‘champion’.

Notes

* This research was carried out within the framework of a convention of scientific collaboration (2013–2016) between the Santesih (EA 4614) laboratory and the ‘Study and Research’ commission of the French Federation for Adapted Sport and with the financial support of the FFSA. The analyses presented in this article do not necessarily reflect the FFSA's point of view.

1. In France, the FFSA, which has a ministerial delegation to organize and develop sport activities for people with mental or psychic disability, is the national federal structure affiliated to the paralympic movement. In France, a movement of American origin is also represented, the Special Olympics, through the Special Olympics France association, which remains a minority.

2. In this case the International Association for para-athletes (INAS) with an intellectual disability of which the FFSA is a member, and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), of which the INAS is a member.

3. This reintegration came nine years after a suspension for proven fraud during the Paralympics of Sydney, where Spanish basketball players enlisted as having mental disabilities turned out to have no mental disabilities. This fraud brought to light the dysfunctions in the paralympic classification procedures which were used at the time.

4. The results presented in this text come from the observations and interviews we carried out with athletes, trainers and federal overseers during the gathering of the French team of: – Swimming (14–16th March, 2014, at the CREPS of Poitiers, – Athletics (18–20th April, 2014 at the CREPS of Rennes) and – Table Tennis (7–9th July, 2015, at the CREPS of Poitiers).

5. IME: Medico-educational institute.

6. ESAT: Help through work establishment and services.

7. Anne Marcellini is an associate professor at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She has been working for many years on the sport practices of people with disabilities; she is the instigator of this type of ethnographic research on the FFSA top-level athletes.

8. In 1971, the UNAPEI designated the National Union of Parents of Maladjusted Children Associations.

9. We have to point out here that certain adapted sports athletes have been able, over the last ten years, to accede to certain responsibilities within their clubs and be represented once a year at the National Consulting of Athletes Council during the FFSA general assembly. This athletes' council was created in 2004. Even if listening to athletes and appointing them to organizational positions remains exceptional, it must be emphasized and recognized as one of the multiple transformations taking place within the federation.