This paper examines Olympic-related bills in the U.S. Congress over the past five decades using critical discourse analysis (CDA). By integrating text mining with the discourse-historical approach (DHA), the study identifies the characteristics, themes, and strategies employed by policymakers to construct the Olympics within political discourse from 1973 to 2022. The results reveal that the Olympics are portrayed as a multifaceted instrument with the potential to advance legislative agendas, promote national identity, and serve as a venue for ideological and power struggles. Furthermore, the discourse has shifted from direct confrontation to more normative and moderate expressions. These findings provide valuable insights into the interplay between sports and political communication, contributing to a deeper understanding of the complex dynamics underlying the Olympics.
AllisonL (1986) The Politics of Sport. Manclnester University Press.
2.
AsanteMK (1998) The Afrocentric Idea. Temple University Press.
3.
AtikcanEÖHandK (2024) Moral framing and referendum politics: Navigating the empathy battlefield. Political Psychology45(1): 193–210.
4.
BarkerDC (2005) Values, frames, and persuasion in presidential nomination campaigns. Political Behavior27(4): 375–394.
5.
BeardsworthR (2015) From moral to political responsibility in a globalized age. Ethics & International Affairs29(1): 71–92.
6.
BendixWJeongGH (2024) Beyond party: ideological convictions and foreign policy conflicts in the US congress. In: Friedrichs GM and Tama J (eds) Polarization and US Foreign Policy: When Politics Crosses the Water’s Edg. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.95–124.
BotelhoJMMMietuleIPuriyH, et al (2021) Economic diplomacy strategy for the recovery of the slowdown of globalization (slowbalization). Journal of European Economy 20(2): 246–261.
9.
BoykoffJ (2022) Framing the games: US media coverage of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Communication and Sport12(1): 19–39.
10.
CaytonADawkinsR (2022) Incongruent voting or symbolic representation? Asymmetrical representation in congress, 2008–2014. Perspectives on Politics20(3): 916–930.
11.
De CoubertinP (1989) Olympic Memoirs. Lausanne: International Olympic Committee.
12.
DemirelSKahramanEGündüzU (2024) A text mining analysis of the change in status of the Hagia Sophia on Twitter: The political discourse and its reflections on the public opinion. Atlantic Journal of Communication32(1): 63–90.
13.
DubinskyY (2024) The Olympic Games and judo diplomacy: An exploratory discussion on country image in Tokyo 2020. Communication and Sport12(1): 149–169.
14.
FaircloughN (2001) Language and Power. Longman.
15.
FeinbergMWillerR (2019) Moral reframing: A technique for effective and persuasive communication across political divides. Social and Personality Psychology Compass13(12): e12501.
16.
FiorinoDJ (2022) Climate change and right-wing populism in the United States. Environmental Politics31(5): 801–819.
17.
GiulianottiR (2015) The Beijing 2008 Olympics: Examining the interrelations of China, globalization, and soft power. European Review23(2): 286–296.
18.
GothaiESaravananSSelvanCT, et al (2024) Optimized machine learning model discourse analysis. Education and Information Technologies29: 16345–16363.
19.
GrixJHoulihanB (2014) Sport and International Relations: An Emerging Relationship. Routledge.
20.
GrossmannMPyleK (2013) Lobbying and congressional bill advancement. Interest Groups & Advocacy2(1): 91–111.
21.
GuetzkowJ (2010) Beyond deservingness: Congressional discourse on poverty, 1964—1996. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science629(1): 173–197.
22.
GuttmannA (1988) The cold war and the Olympics. International Journal43(4): 554–568.
HobsbawmEJ (1992) Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press.
25.
IammarinoMAversanoLBernardiML, et al (2020) International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Glasgow, UK, 2020, pp.1–8. IEEE.
26.
International Olympic Committee (IOC) (2024) Olympic Charter. International Olympic Committee.
27.
JarvieG (2006) Sport, Culture and Society: An Introduction. Routledge.
28.
KozlowskiACTaddyMEvansJA (2019) The geometry of culture: Analyzing the meanings of class through word embeddings. American Sociological Review84(5): 905–949.
29.
LiangLWangHZhangW (2024) Decoding paradoxical identities: The discourse construction of left-behind children in news reports. Discourse & Communication18(4): 535–556.
30.
LiuM (2024) Towards a ‘synergy’ of text mining and critical discourse analysis: A corpus-assisted discourse study of imagining China in Hong Kong political discourse. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities39(2): 625–637.
31.
LiuX (2016) Study of post-Cold War ideological contests from the coverage of Sochi Olympic Games. In: Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Social Science, Humanities and Modern Education. Guangzhou, China, 27 June 2014, pp.224–228. Atlantis Press.
32.
McNairB (2017) An Introduction to Political Communication. Routledge.
33.
MunawarANawazRFiazMK (2023) Ghettoising the elite: Analysing class divide and social status in DHA YouTube adverts. Perennial Journal of History4(1): 26–42.
34.
MurrayB (1992) Berlin in 1936: Old and new work on the Nazi Olympics. International Journal of the History of Sport9(1): 29–49.
35.
NagyK (2023) The discourse-historical approach and ideologies in the speeches of Turkish presidents. Linguistic Forum: A Journal of Linguistics5(2): 57–84.
36.
NěmcováL (2024) Neoliberalism, alternatives and (de)politicisation: Analysis of political discourse during the coronavirus crisis. Discourse & Society36(1): 78–97.
OhYWKimJ (2023) Insights into Korean public perspectives on urology: online news data analytics through latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling. International Neurourology Journal27(Suppl 2): S91–S98.
39.
PerrySLBraunsteinR (2025) Not paying unto Caesar: Christian nationalism, politics, race, and opposition to taxation. Social Forces. Epub ahead of print, 07 April 2025. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf041
40.
ReyesA (2011) Strategies of legitimization in political discourse: From words to actions. Discourse & Society22(6): 781–807.
41.
ShamshiriARyuKRParkJY (2024) Text mining and natural language processing in construction. Automation in Construction158: 105200.
42.
SievertCShirleyK (2014) LDAvis: A method for visualizing and interpreting topics. In: Proceedings of the workshop on interactive language learning, visualization, and interfaces (ed JasonL). Maryland, USA, 27 June 2014, pp.63–70. Association for Computational Linguistics.
43.
U.S. Government Publishing Office. (2024). Congressional Bills. Available at: https://www.govinfo.gov/help/bills (accessed 25 May 2025).
44.
Van DijkTA (1997) What is political discourse analysis?Belgian Journal of Linguistics11(1): 11–52.
45.
Van LeeuwenT (2008) Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford university press.
46.
WangY (2020) Understanding congressional coalitions: A discourse network analysis of congressional hearings for the every student succeeds act. Education Policy Analysis Archives28: 119–148.
47.
WangYFengDWangH (2024) Modernity, aesthetics, and nation re-branding in Olympics: A multimodal discourse analysis of the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. Communication and Sport12(6): 1139–1158.
48.
WeissGWodakR (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity. Palgrave Macmillan.
49.
WodakR (2001) The discourse-historical approach. In: WodakR (ed.) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. Sage, pp.23–61.
50.
WodakR (2015) Critical discourse analysis, discourse-historical approach. In: LlieCSandelT (eds) The International Encyclopedia of Language and Social Interaction. John Wiley & Sons, pp.118–132.
51.
YeMThomasP (2020) Paternalism in China daily’s coverage of Chinese Muslims (2001–2015). Discourse & Communication14(3): 314–331.
52.
YinJ (2007) The clash of rights: A critical analysis of news discourse on human rights in the United States and China. Critical Discourse Studies4(1): 75–94.
53.
ZhangCAfzaalMOmarAAltohamiWM (2023) A corpus-based analysis of the stylistic features of Chinese and American diplomatic discourse. Frontiers in psychology14: 1122675.
54.
ZhangYWangF (2023) Studying the narrative of US policy towards China: Introducing China-related political texts in Congress. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications10(1): 1–10.
