Trash-talk in sports media: participants, functions, and forms of realization
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47475/2070-0695-2026-60-2-99-109Keywords:
trash talk, sports, mediatization of sports, sports media discourseAbstract
The article characterizes the speech genre of "trash talk" within sports media discourse. The speech genre of trash talk involves utterances of an insulting and provocative nature directed at an opponent. At its core, trash talk is based on conflictual interaction and the desire to destabilize the opponent before and during a competition. Initially, trash talk was widespread in martial arts; later, it became popular in team sports. At the present stage, trash talk can be examined within the framework of the media logic of modern sports, where competitions and the daily lives of teams are perceived as a serial narrative, the development of which occurs through conflicts, with trash talk content serving as a manifestation of such conflicts.
The empirical basis of the study consists of Russian sports media resources on the Internet from 2024 to 2026 (websites, Telegram channels, VKontakte communities), as the speech genre of trash talk has gained traction in the sports domain precisely due to online platforms.
Initially, the functions of trash talk were focused on destabilizing and unsettling the opponent before and during a competition. With the spread of this speech genre in new sports-oriented media, the range of beneficiaries of conflictual interaction and trash talk content has significantly expanded. These beneficiaries include teams, which thus attract spectators to stadiums and broaden their broadcast audiences; individual athletes, who gain additional publicity through verbal sparring and build their personal brands around conflicts; and the sports media resources themselves, which enhance their own popularity through trash talk content.
The initiators and participants in trash talk include athletes, coaches, sports veterans, sports experts, journalists, sports commentators, fans, and representatives of sports media.
The multimodal nature of messages in new media facilitates the dissemination of trash talk content in various formats. Sports media explicate so-called "silent trash talk," drawing attention to the semantic content of athletes' gestures, the refusal of athletes or coaches to shake hands or take joint photographs, and "silent" protest actions by fans in the stands.
Thus, trash talk in new media fuels audience interest in competitions and specific matches, while also serving as a tool for drawing attention to the media resource itself.
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