Zack Devlin-Foltz
Fall 2007
Watson Fellowship Project Description
Sports are a human universal. People everywhere run, box, swim, tackle, shoot, volley, catch, hit, or throw.
People everywhere also talk. And every sport has a language of its own. Within a sport, nicknames, inside jokes,
and memories distinguish each town, squad, and league. The individuals in each group shape the game and the
language that makes it come alive. Informal, “pick-up” games are especially rife with cheers, jeers, insults, taunts,
and all sorts of banter. Still, even under the watchful eyes of coaches and referees, official league players develop a
lexicon of their own. The vocabulary used to speak within games tells us what those games mean in wider society.
When players from different ethnic groups compete, their vocabularies set them apart. The way they use their words
can reveal and create good will, tension, and violence. When downtrodden kids play with their tormentors, they can
prove themselves and they can hit back at rivals untouchable in other settings. Or they can be further humiliated.
The possibilities of great triumph and great failure make sports a metaphor for life; an expression of struggle, pain,
and rivalry.
Sports language is the best evidence we have of the feelings that connect athletic competition to its social
context. But we can’t take the words out of context. To know what they convey about the game, we have to know
who is saying them. If given a Watson Fellowship, I will study how organized and informal youth sports express,
relieve, aggravate, and create social tensions. I will study the way players talk to each other on the field: the insults
they fling, the cheers they chant, and the challenges they issue. By living in communities, helping organize athletic
competitions for kids, I will provide a service while gaining access to my “dataset.”
It won’t be hard to gather “data” or “subjects” for my study. Most U.S. kids play something when they are
young, even if it is just tag at recess. When they get older, many of them join school teams or recreational leagues,
building physical competition into their daily routine. In countries where organized sports are scarce, “pick up”
games take their place. Accordingly, I will not have trouble finding sports. However, I will need to work harder to
find my place in the communities that surround them. Towards this end, I plan to volunteer for local organizations
or local communities, coordinating, supervising, or coaching competitions in the favorite local sport. Where
recreational centers or training facilities exist, I will help out however I can: playing, coaching, or doing whatever
needs doing and gets me close to the game. Where there are no such institutions, I will help organize pick-up
games, after school programs, clinics, or whatever seems most appropriate to help kids play and give me something
to study. I will be as participatory as possible, playing when I play well enough, coaching when I play too well, and
carrying water (or whatever it takes) when I play too poorly. If I have to, I will just watch, but I would much rather
be “between the lines.”
I will be looking for patterns of speech and vocabulary that exemplify the interchange between sport and
society. When kids taunt each other, I want to know whether they “play the race card.” When rival towns compete,
I will listen for communal bragging rights. When a coach or referee is around, I will listen for changes. I will ask
how all manner of societal factors affect the game, and whether the game can affect its context. I will supplement
my observations with interviews, designed to flesh out the meanings of what I hear. I will need to know, as well as
possible, what players are thinking and why they choose a given phrase in a given situation. Some phrases may be
almost instinctive, so widely used in a situation that they no longer represent a choice. In this case, I will ask where
the phrase came from, looking for the social determinants of informal vocabulary. In other cases, original or less
common speech will signal more choice on the part of the speaker, highlighting more immediate group/personal
dynamics. I am currently reading academic literature, recommended by a professor on Macalester’s Watson
committee, to gain theoretical background in the role of informal language in society.
I expect to find at least some of these issues because I have seen them before. I have been the “white boy”
picked last for basketball at recess here in the U.S. In the Dominican Republic, my favorite baseball insult was “tú
no tienes fuerza, vete a mi casa y come huevos.” Roughly, it means “you’re not strong, go to my house and eat
eggs.” I loved, and remembered this insult because it seemed to express so much in so few words. I never asked
anyone what it meant (like I would as a Watson Fellow), but it clearly carries more meaning than a simple “you’re
weak.” It implies that you are weak because you don’t eat well, but if you went to my house, you would. It insults a
baseball player (for being weak), it insults his family (for not earning enough to eat well), and it boasts that the
speaker is stronger because he comes from a wealthier family. In a town like Baboso, where I was at the time, very
small differences in income have very large consequences. Everyone in town owned cattle or worked for those who
did. Differences in living standards were largely the result of some families receiving remittances from relatives
working abroad. These families had cement, instead of wooden houses and some even had cars. It was usually the
son of one of these families that I heard “inviting” his opponents to lunch.
If selected, I will go to Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Paraguay, and Argentina. I will stay in small communities,
offering to help out with whatever sports programs they have or need. I will need to spend a considerable amount of
time in each so that the young players get used to my being around. I do not want them to act differently because I
am there. In each country, I will make sure to work in both formal and informal competitions, playing with or
coaching the average player as well as the standout. I am excited to see how those who see sports as a potential
career and a possible ticket to riches abroad treat the game differently from those playing simply for love of playing.
The way players talk to each other changes the form of the game. When one player insults another, both
individuals may throw winning to the wind, seeking only to embarrass each other. When racial or economic
dynamics seep into play, the game suddenly means much more than recreation. In some cases, in-game jawing
might provide a release for more serious or potentially violent tensions: beating a neighborhood rival with a fastball
rather than a fist. Sports may also be the only arena in which some individuals can openly challenge or insult others,
especially if the others are bigger. In the case of informal sports, words add social significance to a game that will
not be videotaped, whose result will not appear in any newspaper, and whose statistics exist only in players’ minds.
In a formal setting, language provides a way for players to communicate sub-dramas below the visible game. While
following all the rules of sportsmanship and class, supervised players can still create social meaning by associating
their team with an identity group or their athletic struggle with a parallel one in wider society.
Probably, the biggest hurdle for me in this project will be to find a place in each community I visit,
physically, socially, and linguistically. Thankfully, this is part of the point. Thus far in my travels, I have proved to
myself again and again that I am brave enough and the average person is welcoming enough to create a niche for
me, despite my starting as a stranger. Everywhere I have been, people have appreciated my willingness to work
hard at their language and their culture, laughing along with them and apologizing when I make mistakes. No
matter how challenging, I know I will not regret throwing myself into cultural immersion. Nothing gets me going
more than proving to myself that I am flexible, smart, and aware enough to function in another society.
Moreover, all the places I propose to travel to are Spanish-speaking. I studied Spanish from 6th grade
through sophomore year of college and spent about three months total in an immersion environment in the
Dominican Republic during high school. While slang and jargon are always the hardest and last things to learn, I
am confident that my current abilities and my desire give me enough of a spring-board to get there.
Formally, I will leave for Paraguay on July 31 st, proceed to Venezuela on December 1st, move to Argentina
on April 1st, and spend my last four months in Puerto Rico. I have a good friend from home most of whose family
lives in Paraguay. Starting there will give me a network to turn to in an emergency and to ask questions like “where
are the best soccer players from?” Keeping Argentina third, while geographically inconvenient, will have me
alternate soccer- and baseball-playing countries. My Spanish and my research technique will certainly improve as
the year goes on. If the two sports differ in their social roles and linguistic characters, I would hate to miss or bias
this by grouping same-sport countries together.
Within countries, I will move when I feel that I would learn more in a new setting. Every community will
have unique dynamics and these will play out in its games. When I have a grasp of one, I will go to another. While
it will probably not be quite so simple in practice, I will surely be as excited to see a new community as I am sad to
leave one I know.
The beauty of this project is that it combines important but very different forms of communication. Youth
slang, with its dynamic and unique meanings, helps define neighborhoods and time periods. Sports, on the other
hand, provide a medium in which people who have zero words in common can interact in meaningful ways.
Combine local language and specific community issues with universal sport, and you are sure to get a potent mix of
social expression. This, ultimately, is the language I hope to speak.
Zack Devlin-Foltz
Watson Fellowship Personal Statement
I admire chameleons. A chameleon travels well, shifting colors to fit in to each new environment. But it
keeps its true shape. I like to think of myself in similar terms. While I like to fit in by changing with each new
environment, I also like to bring the important things with me, holding the crucial pieces of my character constant
regardless of my context. I like to understand each new perspective without forgetting how to think in ones I
already know.
Up to this year, I spent much of my life on baseball fields and with baseball players. I learned to love the
baseball culture of stoicism, hard work, and competitiveness. Still, I retained the sensitivity I get from my mom. I
consider myself very much a combination of her comforting acceptance of whatever made me happy, on the one
hand, and athletics’ uncompromising demands, on the other. I, like any good teammate, always expect 100% effort
from my fellow players; no excuses. But when effort isn’t enough, and a teammate fails, I can empathize the way
my mom would. Since being cut from the baseball team at Macalester this year, I have heard from virtually every
former teammate that my sensitivity meant a lot to them, that I helped them provide full effort by making clear that
no one thought less of them when it wasn’t enough. As sad as I am to have to leave the game, hearing those things
from my teammates almost made it worth it.
This combination of drive and sensitivity has, in turn, carried over into my academic life. I approach
learning, in many ways, like I approached baseball. I like to keep my head down and work, giving up sleep to study
and spending my Friday nights in the library. Learning is worth the cost because it makes me more powerful.
Armed with a new understanding, I can go into the world prepared to make things happen. But power has to be
appropriately used, and intellectual power is no different. How many brilliant theories have proved disastrous in
practice because they did not account for their context in reality? So my desire to work in peace and conflict, to
make a difference right away, helping the world’s people to be more secure, must be tempered by sensitivity.
Before I get any kind of authority, if authority is in the cards for me, I need experience. I need to see developing
countries at the ground level, learning to understand, feel, and communicate better in an environment much different
from my own.
Unable to go abroad for a semester because of baseball and class load, I did not want to miss the
opportunity for international experience during college. So I went to Egypt. In the summer of 2006, I enrolled in a
month-long beginning Arabic program at a language school in Cairo that promised to help its students find
apartments when they arrived. They did and I spent 5 weeks in a nice place with a Turkish journalist and another
American student. I spent my last week, after my class ended, with Galal, an English-speaking neighbor we met
when our electricity went out and he translated our predicament to the doorman. When I went back this past
summer, I got in touch with Galal again, and he refused to let me stay anywhere but his apartment. Such is Egyptian
hospitality. So I spent two months with Galal, refusing to speak English as stubbornly as he refused to let me pay
rent, or even buy him dinner.
I stayed fairly busy my second time in Cairo, spending two hours a day with my Arabic tutor and several
more hours studying vocabulary, or starting random conversations in the street for practice. In addition, for the first
month I also wrote a research paper Macalester had given me a grant for. I read articles about the Muslim
Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist movement, while that same group’s members demonstrated a few miles away.
Needless to say, that was an exciting experience. It reinvigorated my interest in my research, which has now
become my political science honors project on Islamist movements in failed and weak states.
In my second month in Cairo, I arranged a volunteer internship with a USAID contractor called the
Egyptian Environmental Education and Outreach Program (E3OP). With my research done, I needed something
else productive to do with the hours I did not spend bothering Egyptians for language practice. Moreover, I felt that
I owed Egypt a debt. I did not want to come, live for free, consume their language, and leave. E30P was putting
together a booklet of success stories in which the business and environmentalist communities cooperated to find
efficient solutions to environmental problems. Searching for these stories was quite rewarding and reinforced my
natural optimism, my belief that the right institutions can harness human nature for good. I also had the privilege of
going on my own to Fayoum, a town south of Cairo, to gather information on several NGO programs and
environmentally-sustainable businesses E3OP was considering working with. My summers in Cairo, rewarding and
exciting as they were, expanded my appetite for field experience.
At Macalester, as well, I have both blended and maintained my character. An internationally diverse,
politically liberal campus, Mac provides constant opportunities both to learn new perspectives. Sometimes I adopt
them and sometimes I return to my prior view, better-informed and more confident. This school has taught me the
value of being a contrarian and of arguing an opinion for the sake of learning it, whether or not I believe it.
Studying with so many smart people from so many different backgrounds has showed me just how flexible I will
have to be to fit in to this world. But it has also highlighted just how much there is that I can learn, just how much
empowering knowledge is out there for me to pursue.
Let’s not forget Minnesota. The Upper Midwest has taught me that the average person can be friendly. I
have also learned how to say “o” like a Minnesotan and, when I read “brat,” to think German sausage, not spoiled
child. Still, through it all, I have kept important pieces of my East Coast heritage, most importantly my sarcasm.
My sarcasm has deeper roots. My father’s family loves nothing more than the clever quip or the jaunty jibe. I’m
embarrassed to say it, but I probably learned to tease from my father before I learned to empathize from my mother.
Now for the project. Sports language excites me because it brings together so many things that excite me.
Language is the first and most obvious way a new-comer can blend in to a community. When you learn a new
language, you can live and learn in new places, you can overhear more conversations, you can relate to more people,
and you can move in and out of more perspectives. You are more agile. I admire immensely those who can hold a
conversation at full speed in multiple languages. These people can truly speak, if not feel, “at home” in more than
one place.
Language is clearly also important for aspiring conflict-resolvers like myself. Building trust between
would-be belligerents, encouraging them to ignore the extremists in their midst, is as much a problem of
communication as anything else. For outsiders to even understand, let alone influence, that process, they must be
open-minded, aware, and willing to listen. But these attitudes will not be of much help if they cannot speak the
language. One of the best ways to signal and apply this attitude is to learn the local language. In my own brief
travels, Egyptians and Dominicans were never happier with me, never more willing to take me into their homes and
lives, than when I showed just how much I wanted to talk like them. In learning slang, I demonstrated my interest in
a specific place, as specific group. There is no better way to show that I am dedicated to the local community, not
just passing through, than to learn words and phrases that are not useful anywhere else. Hopefully, this attitude will
one day make me a more trustworthy representative of the international community in local conflict resolution
processes. For now, it helps me learn and enjoy as much as I can while I travel.
As for sports, I just could not resist including them in the project. My character is as much as product of
my athletic youth as it is of any other feature my life, besides my family. I have learned so much through being a
player for most of my life. There must be even more left for me to learn as a researcher. I know what baseball
meant to me growing up and would enjoy nothing more than learning what roles sports play for others.
Moreover, in my previous travels, sports provided an alternative form of communication, a non-linguistic
link, an important piece of my own character that I can bring with me because it travels so well. In the Dominican
Republic in high school, I was playing baseball in empty lots before my neighbors knew my name and before I had
learned to enjoy eating yucca. In Egypt, I was a regular participant in street soccer games long before I could name
the ball in Arabic. In my quest to blend in, without losing my own identity, sports have been a rock in my character,
something that came with me everywhere I went and helped me find something I could do, even if I didn’t really
understand where I was.