Abstract
This chapter analyses the linguistic practices of two coaches of a rugby team in New Zealand, specifically examining how they employ personal pronouns, familiar address terms, and personal names to navigate the dynamics of player-directed communication. Building upon existing research, the study contrasts coach-talk during training sessions with match days, highlighting the strategic use of language in different contexts and with different addressees. Adopting an interactional sociolinguistics framework and drawing upon linguistic ethnography and corpus linguistics, the analysis reveals that the choice of personal pronouns, particularly the pseudo-inclusive first-person plural we, serves to foster an illusion of inclusivity while mitigating potential face threats associated with directives. Moreover, familiar address terms, such as mate and bro, are shown to enhance relational solidarity, while personal names specify addressees in multi-party interaction and provide a direct means of engagement but are rarely used in dyadic interaction. The findings illustrate that coaches’ referential choices play a crucial role in constructing team identity, managing power dynamics, and enhancing communication efficacy within a sporting context, and that the specification of addressee and person reference plays a central role in the discourse strategies they adopt to enact leadership.