Toward a typology for negotiating layered identities: An oppositional discourse analysis of girls’ youth sport

This study documents how participants in an all-female youth sport organization negotiate oppositional discourses of identity. Employing Fairhurst and Putnam’s (2019) integrative method of organizational discourse analysis, the findings revealed hegemonic and alternative discourses related to gender (i.e., boys and girls are different; boys and girls are the same), which influenced how participants negotiated a nested feminine-athletic identity and nested identity discourses. Finally, this study offers a typology for how members negotiated oppositional nested and higher-order identities through (a) fleeing, (b) challenging, (c) constricting, and (d) expanding. Practical implications for how these oppositional discourses affect participation in life enrichment groups are discussed.