Citation

Morgan WJ. Am. Behav. Sci. 2010; 53(11): 1574-1589.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/0002764210368086

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Harry Frankfurt’s best-selling book, On Bullshit, asks why there is so much bullshit today in Western cultures, such as the United States. The scope of Frankfurt’s charge is deliberately broad; he claims that public discourse about just any topic of consequence in American culture is filled with such unseemly speech and writing. The same can be said, the author of this article claims, about public discourse about sport. The author argues that one especially important reason sports discourse is rife with bullshit today is because it is the language and logic of the market that shapes how most people see, understand, and interpret sports. That money does most of the talking in market societies such as the United States is, of course, old news. What is not exactly old news, however, is that the language of the market is not only insufficiently nuanced to capture and express what it is that people find compelling about subjects such as sports, but it is wholly unsuited for such communicative purposes.