Here, There and Everywhere: A Journey Into the Hybrid Identity of a Global Athlete

What is it that makes a female professional athlete a “global athlete”? Taking Maria Sharapova as a case study, I argue that there are three main characteristics, or signifiers, at work in the making of a female global athlete; namely, a hybrid identity, an “acceptable” athleticism, and an endorsement contract with Nike Inc., a hybrid identity is the signifier that truly enables a sports celebrity to become a global athlete. I conduct my analysis within an interdisciplinary framework that relies on critical discourse analysis as applied to discourses of migration and belonging (Caldas Coulthard/Iedema 2008, Delanty/Wodak/Jones 2007), as well as on the fields of cultural and media studies (Jackson/Andrews 2005, Stevenson 2004, Miller 2001, Denkin 2001) and feminist theory (Butler 1993, Heywood/Dworkin 2003).