Abstract
Previous research into Olympic primetime broadcasts showed that American network announcers had, at times, used different language when discussing the success, failure, and personality/physicality of Asians and athletes of Asian descent when directly compared to Black, White, or Latino/Hispanic athletes (Billings, Angelini, & MacArthur, Olympic television: Broadcasting the biggest show on earth. Routledge, 2018). However, no study to date has analyzed whether announcers on broadcast network NBC have utilized different descriptors for East Asian athletes and athletes of East Asian descent compared to the composite of all other Olympians. This study divides and classifies NBC primetime announcer commentary about East Asian athletes and athletes of East Asian descent compared to all other athletes during the PyeongChang Games to determine whether there are significant differences in language use, specifically in attributions of success and failure and depictions of personality and physicality. The study also examines how often East Asian names and the names of athletes of East Asian descent are mentioned by NBC announcers compared to those of all other athletes.
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Notes
- 1.
For the purpose of word economy, the abbreviation EA/EAD (East Asian/East Asian descent) will be used throughout this chapter to indicate the combination of athletes living in East Asia (e.g., Nao Kodaira) and athletes of East Asian descent living in other countries (e.g., Nathan Chen). The two categories are combined to allow for a broader sense of how athletes with East Asian heritage are portrayed.
- 2.
A 1080 is when a snowboarder completes three revolutions in the air. In snowboard halfpipe, a back-to-back 1080 happens when a rider comes out of the halfpipe, completes three revolutions in the air, goes back into the halfpipe, comes out of the halfpipe again and immediately completes another three revolutions in the air, and then returns to the halfpipe without falling.
- 3.
In snowboard halfpipe, a rider’s performance is judged on a scale of 0 to 100. Shaun White was the first rider to score a 100 in competition.
- 4.
The triple axel is the only jump where a figure skater starts the jump facing forward, completing three and a half rotations before landing. The triple axel is considered one of the most challenging jumps in figure skating.
- 5.
Because there are so few articles about Liu written in English, the authors note the difficulty of ascertaining much about her background and acknowledge there may be identity issues she has mentioned publicly that were not identified or translated into English.
- 6.
The Yellow Peril stereotype is one that portrays Asian Americans “as ‘foreigner foreigners’ who divert from U.S. dominant cultural norms (and) are economic competitors” (Kawai, 2005, p. 110), and thus challenging the power of the dominant in-group (usually White Americans).
- 7.
Because the complete background of every single athlete is not known, it is possible an EAD athlete might not have been categorized as such.
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MacArthur, P.J., Smith, L.R. (2022). Portrayals of East Asian Athletes Within NBC’s Primetime Broadcast of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. In: Bien-Aimé, S., Wang, C. (eds) Perceptions of East Asian and Asian North American Athletics. East Asian Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97780-1_10
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