DISCOURSE OF DISCIPLINE: COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES IN COACHES’ SPEECH

The great importance sport plays in modern society has resulted in analyses of many aspects of its social dynamics. The relationship of its main actors, in this case the coaches and athletes, was most often discussed form pedagogical, psychological and sociological stances and a relatively small number of studies referred to their communication, or rather its linguistic expression. The aim of this research was to describe the pragmatic mechanisms and the strategy of disciplining that coaches use when talking to athletes in two typical situations in sport: in training and at a competition. The research corpus, collected by a Discourse Completion Test, consists of authentic responses from 93 coaches of both genders. The corpus for analysis included 196 responses, categorised as clusters of speech acts which according to the strategic model could be categorised as examples of the disciplining strategy. Qualitative analysis provided an insight into the types of speech acts used in the analysed speech sequences, the functioning of politeness strategies used to mitigate the pressure on the interlocutors face, conversation implicatures and presuppositions which enable interpretation of the intended meaning that shapes coaches’ discourse. The results of the analysis imply that coaches prefer using a more direct strategy in both observed situations, but also that by combining politeness strategies and indirectness they frequently disguise their communicative intentions, which most often refer to disciplining and requiring a change in the behaviour of the athlete. The conclusions we reached could be practically used in the education of coaches, by raising awareness of the importance of the aspects of linguistic production that would be appropriate in training and competitive situations, since the choice of linguistic strategies can improve the interaction of coaches and athletes.


INTRODUCTION
Sport is a universal social phenomenon and can be observed from various standpoints. The universality of the patterns existing in the sports environment (defined by the code of behaviour and the rules), ensures that sporting participants understand each other easily regardless of cultural, ethnical or political differences (Giulianotti, 2008:318). At the same time, sport is a result-oriented activity and its competitive aspect affects to a great extent different aspects of interaction between its participants.
The role of a coach in team sports in achievement of sporting results is unambiguous, both regarding the transfer of expert knowledge and the process of motivation. Therefore, the psychological aspects of coaches' actions were most often researched. However, the content of communication between the participants in sporting activities, i.e. coaches and athletes, was rarely observed as a parameter that affects not only the relations in a sports club, but also the sports achievements.
The speech of coaches in post-match phases and in communication with the media was analysed (Dumitrou, 2011) as a type of public discourse and Lorenzo, Calvo, Navarro and Rivilla (2013) analysed the verbal behaviour of coaches during the breaks of basketball matches regarding motivation aimed at achieving better scores. Savović, Ubović and Radenović (2018) provided a pedagogical review of the educational actions of coaches applying the discourse analysis on a motivational speech by Paunović, head coach of the U18 Serbian national football team, before a very important match in New Zealand. This research indicated the positive aspect of motivational speeches which do not contain either professional advice or negative emotions. As sport takes place dominantly in two situations in which coaches and athletes communicate, it is necessary to enlighten also the way of interaction between the participants in this specific social communication by analysing the speech they produce, both during the training process and during a competition. It is vitally important to underline that coach discourse, as a type of institutional communication does not shape only their relationship with athletes, but also the relations within the club and between individual athletes. (Vekarić, 2019) As the aim of the paper is to "figure out the mechanisms, processes and knowledge that we use" (Trbojević Milošević, 2016) to interpret the utterances of coaches, our starting point was Austin's theory of Speech Acts (Austin, 1975), i.e. his stance that each speech act in communication produces locutionary (forming sounds, words, grammar), illocutionary (making statement, suggestion, order) and perlocutionary (what we achieve by our utterance) effects. Searl (1991) classifies speech acts into representatives, directives, commissives and declaratives, while Leech (1983) adds the category of rogatives too. It is important to underline that speech acts in this paper were analysed from the stance of Oishi, that the analysis of speech acts should be broadened to the overall speech situation that should be described as "a total speech act in a comprehensive speech situation" (Oishi, 2006). This framework of the analysis is in line with the research goals to interpret also the expressed intention of coaches and not only isolated speech acts. Oishi (2006) introduces a phenomenon of speech situation, determined by a spatial-time location. Such an approach enables explaining the relation of utterances and speakers' intentions.
In order to interpret the meaning of an utterance in a situation when communicative intention does not correspond to the propositional content, the interlocutors convey meaning by inferences such as conversational implicatures and presuppositions. On the pragmatic level, such inferences are necessary to interpret the meaning that was not directly explicated (Trbojević Milošević, 2016). Jule (1996) states that presupposition, as something that the speaker assumes prior to utterance production, in a great number of cases is associated with the usage of certain words and structures. Thus, for example, lexical presupostions are activated by verbs such as the factual verb to know or lexical verbs such as reveal or imagine, as well as iterative verbs that mark repeated actions; structural presupositions are activated by particles including only, just, still, already, etc. Numerous research of speech acts are closely connected to investigations of politeness in linguistics and one of the most famous politeness theories was developed by Brown and Levinson (1987). In their theory, based on Goffman's anthropological notion of face (1974), they attempted to present a theoretical construct, which presumes that each individual has two faces: negative and positive. The negative METHOD This paper is part of broader research 1 aimed at describing and determining the typical structure of communication between coaches and athletes and to point out dominant strategies in their interaction. The corpus for the analysis is written material collected by the Discourse Completion Test. This instrument consists of incomplete discourse sequences for typical situations in the form of a short scenario for one situation and an incomplete dialogue to be completed by the respondents (Blum- Kulka et al., 1982).
The questionnaire covered nine situations from two communication contexts (training and match), which included the majority of the activities in which the interaction between coaches and athletes occurs: pedagogical, professional and educational. The DCT was voluntarily and anonymously completed by 93 coaches (63 males and 30 females) during the course of 2018. The research included only coaches and athletes of team sports (football, volleyball, water polo, basketball and handball). A total of 837 answers were collected, out of which 667 were linguistically relevant for analysis. Out of that number 357 were clusters of speech acts which consist of multiple utterances and thus produce a complex speech situation and they were classified into two groups. The replies were marked with a letter "T" (for Serbian "trener"coach) and the number of the situation it refers to (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9) and the number of the respondent (1-93 e.g. T3/57).
The classification was done according to the Strategic Model of Communication of Coaches (Vekarić, 2019) and the analysed clusters of speech acts, 196 in total, were those that accounted for the usage of the disciplining strategy in the coach discourse.
The analysis was done from the perspective of discursive pragmatics. Pragmatics and discourse analysis are interrelated disciplines dealing with the language in use, but differ mostly per units analysed (Blitvich & Sifianou, 2019). Having in mind that pragmatics deals with utterances, while the discourse analsyis deals with suprasentential structures and that our corpus consists of longer sequences, discursive pragmatics provided an adequate platform for the variety of the perspectives of the analysed discourse (Zienkowski, J. et al., 2011).
The aim of the paper was to deploy an integrative approach and analyse those pragmatic forms, functions and context (Haugh & Culpeper, 2018) that give an indication to the strategy of disciplining in the speech of a coach when they interact with their athletes. Thus the framework of our research was the description and understanding of those aspects the speakers use to constitute their own identities and position themselves and those they communicate with (White, 2011), keeping in mind the context-related features of the said discourse (Aimer & Simon -Vanderbergen, 2011).
The key pragmatic mechanisms, speech acts and politeness strategy were applied through the model of "rational actor" who chooses the means to accomplish their intended objectives (Kasper, 2006) making such means become the matter of rational choices.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The strategic model of coach communication implies the usage of one of the two communicative strategies, the strategy of support or the disciplining strategy. Our analysis of the clusters of speech acts indicated that in more than half of the total number of utterances (196), coaches opted for the strategy of disciplining (Vekarić, 2019). Such utterances most often contained a compulsory request to accept a coach's stance, but also very often they used such utterances to constitute the interlocutors needs, by presupposing the best option for the athlete at that particular moment. The analysis also included utterances which make amends in the form of politeness strategies, but whose primary function, based on implicatures and presuppositions, can be defined as the function of the athlete's disciplining.
The obtained responses ( Figure 1) indicate that the strategy of disciplining works in both situations examined, training sessions and match situations and it also occurred in twelve responses to question no. 9 2 of the questionnaire which refers to the situation in the dressing room after a match. A great number of clusters of speech acts (54% replies) which belong to the strategy of disciplining and which refer to the competitive situation are not in line with the dominant role of a coach in that situation, which is primarily to motivate the players for result-oriented play; consequently it could be expected that in such circumstances the support strategy prevails. Namely, the short time intervals available in competitive 2 9. Although they deterred from the agreed strategy for the match and did not apply those technical options that you expected, your team has won. Everyone is happy but you are not fully satisfied. YOU TELL THEM:

Responses per situations
Training sessions Match After match situations for verbal communication results in the fact that coaches opt for a more direct, though more risky strategy, instead of choosing a more complex strategy and risk an athlete's losing interest in what is said (Vekarić, 2019). This shows that a match is a powerful extra-linguistic factor for speech production, which occasionally is not in line with the communicative intentions of coaches and their dominant role of a motivator.
Deploying the strategy of disciplining in training circumstances is expected, since in such situations a coach appears as an authority figure that possesses competences, but also with the power and obligation to control the application of new knowledge in a desirable manner. However, even in those utterances that contain mitigators, in the form of negative and positive politeness, it is the core part of the speech act that is the face threatening act (FTA) to the athlete.
Interestingly, this strategy appears also in the after-match situation, when one would expect, that thanks to good score, a coach expresses his satisfaction with the result and opts for the supporting strategy. Contrary to that, in a number of cases coaches opted to accompany the praise with those linguistic elements that signalise disciplining, i.e. request a change in the behaviour of the athlete.
By the insight into the corpus it was established that those linguistic devices that marked the strategy of disciplining occupy different positions within the complex utterance so that the analysis was modelled accordingly.
In a limited number of replies the coaches opted for mitigating devices in the form of politeness strategies at the very beginning of the utterance, only to be followed by a speech act that actually indicates illocutionary force and signalises the strategy of disciplining: In the example: It can be seen that the coach deploys an attention marker "come on", which, as a rule, is followed by an utterance which has a function of encouraging; then the strategy of positive politeness in the form of claiming common ground and belonging to the same group by using the inclusive "we". Here, the presupposed meaning is activated by the verb "to try", and therefore the athletes are given an option to make a mistake. Even the second sequence of speech acts is an indirect face threatening act in the form of generalisation and stating the well known facts such as: "This is the senior first league", only to be followed by a deontic modal verb "must", mitigated by the inlusive "we", introducing thus the communicative intention of disciplining. Only in the last speech act of the cluster does the coach use the speech act of prohibition and states the intended meaning of the entire cluster. This order in the sequence of speech acts is characteristic for the situation provided in no. 9 of the questionnaire in which the expected speech act after winning is congratulating for the victory. In the above example the first utterance starts with an expressive speech act of congratulating by using the explicit performative "to congratulate". However, it is followed by a reproach and in the peripheral part of the first utterance the coach hedges his speech act of congratulating. In the utterance the coach uses the strategy of positive politeness, in the form of an inclusive "we", attempting thus to take over a part of the responsibility, followed by an implicit threat by stating a possible negative consequence.
The intention of disciplining is sometimes reflected only after a series of instructive speech acts related to the game techniques, intended to highlight the cooperative relation of the participants in communication, by providing the reasons to support one's own stance. In this part, we can see that the coach, by being redundant, flouts the conversational maxims: Nevertheless, in the final part of the cluster the coach uses a conversational implicature: "For victories over tougher opponents" implying that the opponent was easy to beat, which led to a good score and the presupposed meaning is that the game lacked discipline and that they failed to respect the tasks. In the last utterance of the sequence the coach re-establishes the common context with a strategy of positive politeness ('We can all do it'), presupposing in the second part that "not all players equally desire that": Although these clusters of speech acts begin with the acts by which the coach saves the interlocutor's face and strives to motivate the athlete to change something, they are actually only the introduction to the criticism that follows, very often drawn by an implicature ("you are not persistent"), while the intended meaning is always a request to change something with the player (his/her attitude, behaviour, play), with an additional doubt by which the coach implies that the athlete may not be capable to execute the requested task, perfomring thus additionally a FTA, as in T6 / 84 "Listen, everything is fine, it is a big difference, we are losing, but come on, don't make mistakes like you have only trained for two days. Defend two, three attacks, grit your teeth and in the attack go a little more decisively on goal. You tightened up and they saw it, you have to attack one on one, pass, make 2 minutes, you have to be more aggressive, don't let the ball circle around while they look at you and wait for you to make a mistake. C'mon play the game until the end." The first utterance represents a coach's attempt to encourage athletes "everything is fine", but he implicitly (negation) points out that they are making mistakes. The central part consists of several instructive utterances used by the coach in his/her attempt to try and discipline them in order to endure "until the end". In the example: The sequence begins with a direct ple and an indirect request, only to turn in the next utterance into a directive-commissive threat, whose communicative aim is that the interlocutor meets the condition, otherwise a punishment will follow in the form of a ban from training. Such utterances show that by keeping athletes in suspense, the coach actually conditions them in order to produce the desired effect and change their behaviour.
The second, by far larger group of clusters of speech acts includes those in which the coach at the very beginning uses directives (orders, requests), commissives (warnings, threats) or rogatives which pose an inherent FTAs to athletes and only in the last utterance they add a repair in the form of politeness strategy or the expressive speech act of encouraging such as in the example: The coach starts with an order implying that what the athlete is doing is not good and then by deploying the strategy of positive politeness, notices and underlines the interlocutors qualities, common interests, needs. Instead of conditioning, by using the verb "to try" he/she leaves an option to the athlete and at the end he adds a repair in the form of the speech act of encouragement.
In the example: The coach highlights the team as an institution, which acts also as an external disciplining factor for all athletes. It is followed by a warning and by using a scalar implicature "only those who" the athlete is put in the group of those who are not performing well. In the last utterance the responsibility is shifted to the athlete.
In such utterances, repairs are most often performed by using a strategy of positive politeness, through establishing a common context and stressing the belonging to the same group: T8 Rogatives which appear in such sequences are placed at the very beginning as a rule; these are actually rhetorical questions, that are an indirect face threatening act to athletes and only in one example the coach supposedly expects to get an answer: In such sequences an indirect question appeared only in one example, but it was immediately followed by an ironic, rhetorical question threatening the athlete's face without a repair: After such impolite rhetorical questions coaches often introduce a team or general sports rules to intensify pressure on athletes to change his/her behaviour, followed by a direct warning with a repair in the form of positive politeness strategy by highlighting a cooperative relation between the interlocutors "as we agreed".
Other direct questions are ironical and imply that the athlete is doing something wrong. The fact that coaches continue their speech after these utterances indicates that they do not expect any answer. Thus they consolidate their power of decision making and the athletes are left little space to react verbally in any way. The rhetorical questions are followed by: a) Encouraging by using the in-group identity markers (inclusive "we"), but the last utterance of the sequence contains a directive speech act of requiring a change: T4/5 "Čemu to, zašto radiš protiv sebe? Idemo sve iz početka, možeš ti to sigurno! Fokusiraj se, misli pozitivno!" b) Additional direct rogative which intensifies pressure on an athlete, followed by a reply and an order as FTA, since it presupposes that it is questionable whether the athlete is capable of fulfilling the required task. The presupposed meaning is deducted from the utterance "Look the others" meaning that the others are performing tasks correctly. It is followed by a commissive speech act by which the coach conditions the athlete to decide on his/her own whether they can continue, so this utterance is interpreted as a threat: We can see that the utterances are intensified by markers "bre", "dokle" "ajdeee", and that direct FTAs to an athletes face are mitigated by strategies of positive politeness of stressing the cooperative relations between a coach and an athlete ("radimo šta smo se dogovorile ") or by argumenting their own stance.
Indirect face threatening acts are produced also by using generalisations which refer to well known facts on a given sport, roles of the participants, therefore giving justification to the coaches for the disciplining that follows and that is expressed by directive-commissive speech acts of threats, aimed not only to oblige athletes, but also to force them to execute a task or behave in a particular way: It has been noted that in these examples coaches additionally distance themselves from their players, by stressing their role as decision makers. This is most often achieved by using a first person pronoun "I" or by underlining their coaching position by which they want to enforce and enhance their authority. Coaches underline their role also by polarisation achieved by the use of personal pronouns "I" vs "you": With the last utterance of the cluster being often a directive speech act of threat. The third group of clusters includes those which in all the constituent utterances contain speech acts inherently threatening face of their hearers by using directives, commissives or their combinations.
Such complex sequences of utterances which contain at the same time functions such as: requests, threats, warnings, criticisms, prohibitions, result from the coach's power of forcing and praising and coaches, aware of their position, do not hesitate to take risk and commit a FTA by their utterances: This linguistic behaviour is particularly noticeable in competitive situations, when a fast, spontaneous communication does not have an instructive character, but is dominantly affective and when due to tension and excitement, the needs of face are tacitly neglected because the situation as such requires urgent reaction and communication is restricted by time and space.

CONCLUSION
The research identified the typical features of coach discourse when deploying the disciplining strategy, defined within the Strategic model of coaches' communication with athletes.
The strategy of disciplining implies inherent power of a coach in his/her interaction with athletes, requiring the change of behaviour or actions, which is in line with the dominant role of the coach in this specific social situation, which range from instructional, controlling to motivation roles.
As the communicative intentions of coaches are not always explicit, their real meaning was interpreted by observing multiple planes: speech acts, politeness, implied or presupposed meaning. The results indicated that coaches apply this strategy almost equally in the two observed situations: training and match. However, it was not expected to find this strategy deployed also post festum, thus in the post-match situation, when the achieved score was good and when the strategy of support was expected. In such cases, the strategy of disciplining was implicit and the communicative intention of disciplining was drawn by implicatures or presuppositions.
The results of the research provide an insight in those pragmatic mechanisms and linguistic expressions that coaches use to accomplish various communicative intentions in training and match-related situations: the presented speech events encompass an extensive inventory of expressions ranging from dominantly directive, commissive and representative speech acts, rhetorical questions to explicit insults and deploy almost all strategies of positive and negative politeness, face threatening acts with or without (often) repair, with a markedly low frequency of mitigating devices. Such a choice is not unusual, when having in mind the social status of coaches in the sporting (communicative) community and this discourse displays a clear reflection of relations of power and control between coaches and athletes, being distinctly asymmetric (Vekarić 2019).
Finally, but equally important, the results of this kind of research can and should be applied in the education of coaches and provide a wide range of patterns of communicative situations and linguistic production choices with appropriate communication strategies aimed at developing and improving successful interpersonal communication with athletes.