ABSTRACT
As a matter of grammar, the terms ‘sportsman’ and ‘sportswoman’ are genus of the species ‘sportsperson’. As a matter of linguistic politics, ‘sportsperson’ is the gender neutral term to designate anyone who plays sport, despite the tendency of coaches and journalists alike in using the grammatically correct masculine designation for the collective noun. The term ‘sportsperson’ is, I suggest, deceptively simple. We use it all too unproblematically. Sports sociologists often peddle talk of ‘sporting bodies’ and sports psychologists often refer to ‘sporting minds’. At one level it is neither difficult to understand nor complain about their language. On another this body-mind bifurcation, despite its long and reputable history in Western philosophy, is deeply regrettable. It clearly reduces the complex wholes that are persons into separable elements and does this in such a fashion, as Marx noted so well, of leaving minds to dominate dumb muscle.
