Bodybuilding: Conflicting Focuses Sandvig 1

Shane Sandvig

Professor Speiser

Writing 2

February 21, 2017

Bodybuilding: Conflicting Focuses

Bodybuilding has been established as a sport for a little over a century, but a way of life

since the times of Ancient Greece in the sixth century before the common era. Many things have

changed in the weight lifting field including the size that people are capable of getting as well as

the reason for such athletic activity. From a historical perspective, bodybuilding has changed

drastically from Ancient Greece to the Golden Era and to modern bodybuilding, however from

a psychological prospective bodybuilding has not changed as much as one would think. Sure,

bodybuilders in the current era are sculpting their bodies in order to win competitions for money

and fame which is a lot different than the Ancient Greeks sculpting themselves to expand their

athletic capabilities in fighting arenas and war. But from a psychological stand point, all of these

people test their athletic capabilities for one reason, to show their own form of survival of the

fittest. Texts in both of these discourse communities show the true difference in these academic

disciplines in their subject matter as well as establishing different writing styles. Psychology and

history sources about bodybuilding present their information in different ways through their

lexis, audience, structure, and literary practices while also aiming their writing from different

perspectives around the topic of bodybuilding.

The lexis of a specific discourse community gives the discourse community its own

unique characteristics to set the discipline apart from others. Writers in psychology and history

create their texts to aim at different audiences and a way to do this is implement a different lexis
Bodybuilding: Conflicting Focuses Sandvig 2

within their writing. Historians write their pieces to educate their readers on the subject that they

are speaking about and to do this, they need to use broad terms so that any type of audience can

understand what they are speaking about. They do not use complicated terms that only a

historian or someone educated in history could understand. On the other hand, psychology uses a

much more complicated and specific lexis. With the use of cognitive and other words that are

specifically used in science fields, psychologists aim their writing at an educated audience that

would need to know what specific words mean to understand the text. Neim Emini and Malcolm

Bond display the use of scientific terms in their article when they describe the reasons for

consistent bodybuilding with the statement, Psychologically, dependence has been linked to

both muscle dysmorphia and lower life satisfaction.1 Without the knowledge of what the term

muscle dysphoria means would leave the audience confused, but with further education on the

term the reader can understand the sentence. Muscle dysphoria is the opposite of anorexia and is

the psychological reason why bodybuilders feel the need to become increasingly bigger by the

possible use of anabolic steroids. In the present, this is how bodybuilders show their way of

displaying their survival of the fittest mindset, a mindset that was much more literal to the

Ancient Greeks.

Although the lexis used by authors of each discourse community tells a lot about who the

audience they are aiming at is, these authors expect different reactions from their readers.

Readers of psychology texts have more trouble reading the difficult vocabulary of the author,

however the information of the text is clearly seen and the conclusions of the data given is

clearly shown. The audiences of these texts do not have to think outside of the box as much

when it comes to observing these texts. The experiments, observations, data, and conclusions are

1
Neim N. Emini and Malcolm J. Bond, "Motivational and Psychological Correlates of
Bodybuilding Dependence." Journal of Behavioral Addictions. Akadmiai Kiad, Sept. 2014.
Bodybuilding: Conflicting Focuses Sandvig 3

clearly stated in the texts, like the article Motivational and psychological correlates of

bodybuilding dependence. On the other hand, historians expect a lot more out of their audience

in the aspect of interactions with the text. Although historians simply explain events in the past

to their audiences, they expect their audiences to question why certain things happen and connect

these to present day events. In addition, authors in the history discourse community include

questions in their texts and ask their reader why he or she believes the event in history took

place. An example of this in the field of bodybuilding is displayed when Adam Sinicki is

describing bodybuilding during the times of Ancient Greece and asks his readers, Perhaps the

introduction of gymnasiums led to this appreciation of super-strength?2 Sinicki expects his

audience to think of questions like this one in order to have his readers be more interactive with

the text and think like a historian would. Even though psychology texts are harder to comprehend

while reading because of the complicated lexis used to describe an experiment or topic, they do

not take as much critical thinking as history texts do. This also transfers to the way each text is

structured as a way of easily communicating a point to each discourse communitys audience.

Both psychological and history texts are structured in a way that is easy for the readers to

understand. Both of these use headings functioning as a way to separate each section of text to

show the audience that the subject matter is switching. However, psychology sources create each

heading to show the reader which part of the experiment is being illustrated through evidence

that is supported through the experiment. These can include the hypothesis, observations,

analysis, conclusions, and any other part that would be included in a basic experiment taken by a

psychologist. In history texts, the author uses these headings in the same way as chapters would.

These headings display different periods of time as history texts usually follow a chronological

2
Adam Sinicki, "Old-Time Strongmen and the History of Bodybuilding." The Bioneer. N.p., 17
Sept. 2014.
Bodybuilding: Conflicting Focuses Sandvig 4

order to create an easier way of communicating to the audience. This can be seen in the novel

Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon by the constant heading that are named

after a point in history that will be referred to in the bodybuilding industry. An example of this

within the text is the progressive telling of the narrative starting at the title War Years which

explains how bodybuilding was affected during World War II to the next title which is named

Post-War Challenges.3 The chronological order helps the reader understand the topic easier

since the texts are formatted in the same order as history goes. History texts also include pictures

of specific artifacts or important people that are applicable to the topic that is being discussed.

The use of pictures in a psychology source would not be needed because psychology information

is all based off of statistics and the results of the experiments so pictures in this case are

unnecessary. Instead of pictures, psychologists use graphs and charts to prove their hypothesis or

results from a given experiment. These factors that play a role in each of these academic

disciplines can be categorized under their literary practices, however there is more that is

different within each text to make them a part of each academic discipline.

The most contrasting aspect between the two academic disciplines of history and

psychology is their literary practices, or their content of focus within the texts. Psychology texts

focus more on the quantitative analysis of a given topic in order to give the reader an

understanding of this topic. This includes focusing of giving the audience specific statistical

evidence from an experiment that has been done to prove to the reader of a specific conclusion.

In addition, the author of these texts take the results and descriptions of an experiment that is

taken by a psychologists and illustrates the results by terms of science and statistics to prove the

specific point. This can be shown in the article written by Neim Emini and Malcolm Bond as

3
John D. Fair, Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon. Austin: U of
Texas, 2015. Pgs.78-81.
Bodybuilding: Conflicting Focuses Sandvig 5

these two psychologists do an experiment to prove why the majority of bodybuilders lift weights

the way they do. The two psychologists discuss the topic of experiment, the reason, the methods

used and later the results of the experiment. An example of a part of the results is given to the

readers, Questionnaires were completed by 101 men (mean age = 30.6 years, SD = 9.3, range

18-67). Participants had an average weight training history of 10.1 years (SD = 8.3).4 The

authors include standard deviations, averages, and the range of the sample of people they

observe. In addition to statistical information, psychologists tend to constantly refer back to their

research to back their quantitative analysis. In their book, psychologists J. Kevin Thompson and

Guy Cafri bring up past research to prove a psychological theory like when they state, Research

has demonstrated that attractive people are perceived as possessing a variety of positive traits

Research also indicated that people in Western societies believe muscularity can be equated with

positive personality traits.5 They identify past research to inform the reader of why people tend

to want to be muscular and thats because it is looked as a positive trait and people want as many

positive traits to be more attractive. The information used within a psychology text greatly

differs from that in history for history texts do not focus on the statistical sciences of the subject.

Historians and authors of history focus on their subject and write as though they are telling a

story of the past. This can be shown by historians familiarizing with their audience and

explaining them a specific historical event through story. In addition, the reader can see this

story-like structure through the chronological order of the document as well as the historian

trying to communicate spoken dialogue through text. This type of writing can also be referred to

as qualitative analysis as well as narrative writing. Historians focus their writing on the quality

4
E i i a d Bo d, Motivatio al a d Psychological.
5
J. Kevin Thompson and Guy Cafri. The Muscular Ideal: Psychological, Social, and Medical
Perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007. P.27.
Bodybuilding: Conflicting Focuses Sandvig 6

within their text and the need to explain themselves through words, while psychology focuses on

communication through numbers.

Bodybuilding has been a subject of interest that can be seen as far back as the times of

Ancient Greece. One can read about bodybuilding from all kinds of different text from various

academic disciplines, or discourse communities. But, if someone read from a text of one

discourse community, he or she will have a different understanding of the subject than someone

who read a text from another discipline. These differences can be observed in bodybuilding

through academic disciplines such as psychology and history. These contrasts of the

understanding of bodybuilding can be seen through each discourse communitys lexis,

expectations of the audience, textual structure, and literary practices.

Sources

Emini, Neim N., and Malcolm J. Bond. "Motivational and Psychological Correlates of
Bodybuilding Dependence." Journal of Behavioral Addictions. Akadmiai Kiad, Sept. 2014.
Web. 21 Feb. 2017. <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4189312/>.
Fair, John D. Mr. America: The Tragic History of a Bodybuilding Icon. Austin: U of
Texas, 2015. Print.
Sinicki, Adam. "Old-Time Strongmen and the History of Bodybuilding." The Bioneer.
N.p., 17 Sept. 2014. Web. 21 Feb. 2017. <http://www.thebioneer.com/history-bodybuilding-old-
time-strongmen-lost-training-methods-feats-strength/>.
Thompson, J. Kevin., and Guy Cafri. The Muscular Ideal: Psychological, Social, and
Medical Perspectives. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2007. Print.