Pronouns and Pro Sports: The Linguistics Behind Social Media Marketing

Effective sports marketing must convey information to fans. The marketer has only some control over events, and the manager must work with each day’s developments, but subtle cues in the marketing message may result in different interpretations and have strong ties to psychological processes. Social media share characteristics such as instantaneous communication, interactivity, and democracy of content (often without editors), which allows some flexibility for the marketer but also the potential for different cues to be passed on to fans. The paper reviews the effects of pronouns within the context of the messages and shows the differences in pronoun and article usage, and potential effects on behavior, among various sports organizations.