Language Relativity in Legacy Literature: A Systematic Review in Multiple Languages

Ji Wu, Madeleine Orr, Kurumi Aizawa and Yuhei Inoue
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Ji Wu: School of Economics and Management, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai 200433, China
Madeleine Orr: Institute for Sport Business, Loughborough University London, London E15 2GW, UK
Kurumi Aizawa: Independent Researcher, Madison, WI 53705, USA
Yuhei Inoue: Sport Policy Unit, Department of Economics, Policy and International Business, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester M15 6BH, UK

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 20, 1-18

Abstract: Since the Olympic Agenda 2020, legacy has been widely used as a justification for hosting the Olympic Games, through which sustainable development can be achieved for both events and host cities. To date, no universal definition of legacy has been established, which presents challenges for legacy-related international knowledge transfer among host cities. To address this gap, a multilingual systematic review of the literature regarding the concept of legacy was conducted in French, Japanese, Chinese, and English. Using English literature as a baseline, points of convergence and divergence among the languages were identified. While all four languages value the concept of legacy as an important facet of mega-events, significant differences were found within each language. This finding highlights the importance of strategies that align different cultures when promoting sustainable development of some global movements such as the Olympic legacy. Sport management is replete with international topics, such as international events and sport for development, and each topic is studied simultaneously in several languages and with potentially differing frameworks and perspectives. Thus, literature reviews that examine the English literature, exclusively, are innately limited in scope. The development of partnerships and resources that facilitate cross-lingual and cross-cultural consultation and collaboration is an important research agenda. More research is needed on knowledge translation across languages.

Keywords: Olympic Games; sustainable development; legacy; linguistic relativism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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