Professional Interpretation in Sports Training – An Analysis of the Communicative Practices of Vernacular Video Analysis

This paper deals with the communicative practices and expert vision. It shows that interpretation of video-recordings is not a purely cognitive, but rather an ongoing communicative accomplishment. Based on the analysis of video recordings and ethnographic research, it the analysis shows how professionals in sports training themselves use audio-visual data to generate knowledge. The analysis is based on the theoretical background of communicative constructivism and addresses the participants’ use of technology, the situative bodily performance of making things visible and the local production of knowledge as a communicative practice. The specific forms exhibit the characteristics of local cultures of “vernacular video analysis”. While the paper highlights the situative aspects of interpretation work it also embeds them in the wider framework of a field specific arc of work.