How Linguistic Study Relates to Football Commentary - Essay Example

How Linguistic study relates to football commentary Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3Analysis 4 Football terminology 4 Online Commentary 6 Characteristics of Online Sports Commentary 7 Football is War 9 Conclusion 11 Bibliography 14 Introduction This discourse aims at evaluating the relationship between linguistic studies and football commentary putting into perspective the analysis of the affluence of linguistic analysis in relation with football commentary. Combining linguistics and football brings out interesting features for linguists. Football language provides various rewarding topics for linguistics interested in their research. Among others is lexicography evaluation of the vocabulary applied in football commentary. Football vocabulary constitutes very few repetitive words and events. They include passes, free kicks, shots, interventions, and referee. However, football vocabulary entails many texts including spoken commentary and written reports disseminated daily and describe occurrences. Linguists continue to develop vocabulary from the myriad events. A professional soccer game anywhere in the world turns out as an important an activity through the airtime it receives in the public media as well as its presentation. The media makes it possible for people to share football events across the globe. The media offers various forms of football commentary to satisfy different needs of people in different parts of the world including information and entertainment. The different ways include carrying out interviews with players, football officials, professionals, experts, coaches, and live commentary. In some contexts, people tend to question regarding the quality of post-match interviews with players conducted by journalists. Critics question the use of unclear language, empty mechanicals, failure by players to give straight answers, misleading questions from journalists, and inadequate questioning. Football commentary as well as football interviews, are a rich source of linguistic vocabulary exploited in a humorous away that also creates entertainment to the listeners and viewers. Interviews in football commentary are not a reserve for linguistic studies because it also takes place in other disciplines such as media and sports studies. The disciplines assess the quality of interviews in the commentary, application of metaphors, and the general structure employed in the interview. Among other features, linguistics studies investigate the language of football, the relationship among characteristics of the interviews, the expanded special context, online commentary, and quality of the commentary. Analysis Football terminology Linguists hold that the language of football entails football terminologies at the foremost. Various linguists present different articles that describe various forms of language application in the media while covering a match. Schmidt has a Kicktionary where he describes the language of football, which is an electronic source. Among other features, the electronic article brings together methodologies from corpus linguists, the concept of semantic connections, the theory of frame semantics in the process of enabling the audience to evaluate the relationships between lexical units in many ways. Schmidt uses examples from Polish, German, and English media while describing and highlighting significant similarities concerning the influences of specific prefixes and particles present in three languages. The constant action-taking place on the pitch relates closely to the verbs applied by journalists in the media. Other linguists in other parts of the world such as Nigeria analyze the use of words from the Igbo language to express ideas involved in football actions. The popularity of football results in the development of special vocabulary applied while covering a football match whether it is online, on television, on radio, or during analysis. The development presents a situation where it is difficult for anybody outside the linguistics profession to draw a precise difference of the words assigned specifically to the general language as well as special words applied to football. Linguists aver that terminology applied in football entail English loan words and loan translations from other languages. Translations depend on the origin of the word in context. It explains different scholars handle different languages and their use in football. Uchechukwu addresses the use of Igbo words in football commentary, and Pintaric handles the Croatian language football, Dosev deals with the use of Bulgarian words in football, and Gamal concentrates on Egyptian words among many more (Crolley, 1998, p. 183). The language of football constitutes numerous idioms, a great element of the study by linguists. Great differences exist pertaining to the individual variations and frequency of war, conflict, and peace as the primary features of several metaphors in languages and cultures cutting across the globe. The media in West Bank can refer to a shot at goal as a ground-to-ground missile. Other commentators refer to a curve by a player as a banana range. Similarly, in Cameroon they have a banana shot. On the other hand, Levin concentrates on phrases relating to minutes, nets, and whistle and reports that they entail semi-fixed phrases largely whose functions conventionally describe repetitive events during a football match. Linguistics also explores the use of onymics including names of stadiums, nicknames given to players, as well as investigating the origins of those names alongside those given to stadiums. The media for instance, coined a Zlatan Ibrahimovich when he appeared on stage while in Netherlands. ‘Ibra Cadabra’ that translates to the spitting Cobra with Ibra being the shortened version of Ibrahimovich is the nickname for the Swedish international and captain currently a star at Paris Saint German (PSG) (Chapanga, 2004, p. 71). The name developed after the player started scoring goals at will. The same applies to André Arshavin, and the former Arsenal and Russian international became the Assassin courtesy of the English media. Kenyan and Aj Ajaccio striker, Denis Oliech, became, The Menace courtesy of the BCC after tormenting opponents in the process ending Kenya to the Africa Nations Cup in two thousand and four. Other linguists such as Kamaruddin evaluate the use of onymics perspectives in other parts of the world including Malaysia while Sonnehauser covers the same Germany (Eriksson, 1997, p. 31). Online Commentary Linguists continue to develop interest in the language of the internet with some of them referring to it as a variety of language. Brewer, for example, calls it electronic discourse defining it as a form of writing that reads, in a way, which appears as speaking. It appears in a manner that the commentator writes and speaks simultaneously. Netspeak is a cover terminology applied by Crystal in reference to four situations of communication namely: chat groups, electronic mails, the Web, and virtual worlds. According to the author, amalgamates components of speech of writing and speech with elements of writing prevalent. Other scholars such as Biber and Conrad handle the online language as part of electronic communication. In addition to linguistic characteristics of electronic mails, they deal with postings on e-forums and text messages on the same platforms. Conrad and Biber treat them as electronic registers (Beard, 1998, 66). The limited space does not allow the commentator to deal with concepts fully and in details. Great comparisons exist between the use of words by a sports announcer and the one engaging in written commentary. They are both sub varieties of football language carrying many differences and similarities. As opposed to sports announcement and announcers, written sports commentary attracted little research from scholars in the field of linguistics. However, it is both a discourse genre and register. The aspects constitute three important features differentiating them from other aspects. It contains two discourse phrases similar to the sports announcer that are personal expression of opinion and objective reporting (Fauconnier, & Turner, 2002, p. 156). They are involved and uninvolved language during coverage. Professionals describe written sports commentary to which online commentary falls as the written monologue for masses with little option of getting a response from the audience. A great connection exists among various from of written sports commentary because of the shared values involving the commentators as well as the target audience. The language applied in this context is relatively formal with outstanding syntactic patterns. The patterns include time clauses among others (Mikos, 2006, p. 112). Comparatively, the language has more vocabulary compared to oral commentary. It has a higher number of nouns compared to personal pronouns as well. Written sports commentary aims at covering a football match with much hindsight. It explains the reasons why the discourses in the same area are full of past tense forms of verbs. Characteristics of Online Sports Commentary Conrad and Biber enlist seven features of online sports commentary constituting the situational factors of the same form of written sports commentary. A sports writer seated next to a TV screen produces an online sports commentary. Addressors are involved in co-rephrasing the text. Addressors constitute other journalists also with specialties in sports journalism. The difference is that addressors could be in the pitch where the match takes place. By offering relevant statistics, they add color to the commentary besides their personal opinion as well as background information. The additional information comes when nothing fascinating takes place at the scene of action. An ESPN sports journalist offered the following example seated at the Soccer City Stadium during a match in the 2010 World Cup tournament in Johannesburg. 85’ ’ John Brewing, at Soccer City: It looks as if extra time beckons. Robben has again blown a golden chance. The Dutch bench claim foul play but they have the nerve. (ESpn) 6’ (Chovanec, 2008, p. 19). The online sports commentary targets a group of individual football fans citing different reasons for not accessing a television screen and radio broadcasting station. These fans are always interested in getting live updates for the ongoing match. The groups described above are the participants. The second feature entails the relationship among participants. There is an element of interactiveness in the online sports commentary. It is nonetheless, limited compared to other forms of the written sports commentary. The forum provides a chance to addresses to respond by posting short messages in the comment box. The medium lacks a personal form of relationship among participants but shared knowledge remains substantial. The feature is common across all electronic registers. Sports producers note their minute-by-minute contributions, write, and send them electronically to the websites for viewers and readers to access (Bergmann, & Luckmann, 1995, p. 302). Reports and comments in online football commentary take place in real time because they are typed and practically produced. The producers work under huge pressure of beating time and accuracy because they have little time and opportunity to revision, deleting and editing the content. The opportunity to change the content depends on the typing speed and linguistic competence. However, revisions and additions are limited compared to the opportunity in other forms of written sports commentary. The setting of online sports commentary is in a manner that addressees and addressors do not share the venue of communication. They only share time. It is also likely that audiences can read the comments and share opinions long after a football match. The media has the capacity to keep them in the online archives. On general grounds, online football commentary informs the readers of the actions of the pitch by having minute-by-minute updates ready for consumption by the reader. Football is War Many scholars including George Orwell dealt with the application of war-inspired terminology in live football commentary. Through this research, it is definite that a significant theoretical transfer between the selected domains that demonstrate the validity of master metaphor, FOOTBALL IS WAR. The metaphorical mapping puts together various forms of intensifying vocabulary to create a war scenario that allows commentators to add pace and nerve to their coverage of the match. In the process, they transform actions in the event into an occurrence that the audience can comprehend easily. They build a physical conflict by handling listeners and viewers at an emotional and a primary and level. George Orwell argues in his article The Sporting Spirit that football is an imitation of warfare that listeners and viewers believe seriously. They believe that within any short periods, jumping, running, as well as the kicking of a ball is all evaluations of national good features. Watching, reading online, and listening to British media describe the clash of two big teams in the United Kingdom, their great athletes in long distances face off with Kenyans is interesting. Their athletes in short distances coming head-to-head with Jamaicans and The English National Team, ‘The Three Lions’ head to the world cup, it appears as though they are headed into a war with the rest of the world. Furthermore, Orwell posits that a serious sporting event such as a football match has nothing to do with fair play (Kuiper, & Scott, 1996, 41). It is full of jealousy, hatred, disregard of all rules of the game, boastfulness, as well as sadistic pleasure derived through witnessing occurrences of violent actions. He sums up that it is a war without the use of firearms, shooting, and the roaring of deadly weapons. Authors in the sporting industry create a parallel route in the minds of audiences between football and war. Linguists note that there is an appealing cognition of parallelism between football action on the pitch and a military action. They evaluate the two domains though blending. The same linguists investigate the similarities structurally between football actions and war in general terms. Other linguists expand to handle the similarities in other sporting actions. They draw and outline the associations between activities in the two domains. Specific attention goes to those with metaphorical forms. Commentators portray a football match as a contest appearing in the perspective of warfare. Presently, the relationship between football and war is unavoidable and undeniable. In fact, the understanding of football depends on the connection between the two conceptual domains. Using the British media as an example their description validates this statement. I. Manchester United beat Arsenal by one goal after a titanic battle. II. Ferguson awaits Wenger’s heavy artillery. III. Liverpool captain to skipper the English squad IV. Fellaini to become the first casualty of Manchester United revolution under Van Gaal Italicized words in the sentences demonstrate that a football match is a battle with active people including squads and captains aiming at defeating each other by beating one another using weapons such as heavy artillery. At the same time, the battle strives to bring out specific effects including revolutions and casualties (Gleich, 2009, p. 167). The few excerpts from newspapers, television, radio, and online commentary shows the belligerent way in which commentators present a football match. Today, it is unimaginable to think of a football match commentary without using war terminologies. Conclusively, it is true that commentators organize a football match in line with the parameters and principles of warfare. Furthermore, the organization continues to remain a prerequisite for journalist to develop and produce a lively media product for audiences. Journalists use cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) in achieving the desired fete. Case studies including a minute-by-minute commentary, as well as coverage in the newspaper, bring out a clear picture of the application of war terminologies in the football match. The media also publishes some of the contexts live on the web during the match. The British media for instance, BBC, the Guardian, and Daily mail among others use the current technology to air football matches give live updates to its audiences. The focuses of linguistic studies on football commentary covers match preview, live football coverage, post-match interviews, and match analysis. Conclusion The media plays a significant function in the staging and presentation of a football match because playing football is a media activity. Linguists in addition to professionals from other disciplines including sports studies and journalism present various studies on different ways of reporting occurrences on various media platforms. The media includes radio, television, online, and newspaper among others. These commentaries have an infotainment element cutting across. Commentators also engage in broadcasting by giving personal opinion, as well as background information about the players. Professionals in linguistics continue to build terminologies from the many events. A soccer match anywhere in the world is an essential activity through the airtime it receives in the public media as well as its presentation. The media makes it possible for people to share football events across the globe. The media outlets offer different forms of football commentary to satisfy different needs of people in different parts of the world including information and entertainment. Linguists state that vocabulary applied in football entail English loan words and loan conversions from other languages across the globe. Translations depend on the origin of the word in context. It explains different scholars handle different languages and their use in football. Bibliography Bergmann, Jörg & Luckmann, Thomas, 1995, Reconstructive genres of everyday communication. In: Quasthoff, Uta (ed.): Aspects of Oral Communication. Berlin: de Gruyter, 289-304. Gleich, Uli, 2009, Nähe trotz Distanz: Parasoziale Interaktionen und Beziehungen zwischen Rezipienten und Sportlern. 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Scott Allan. 1996.An Introduction To English Language. London: Macmillan. Chovanec, Jan, 2008, Enacting an imaginary community: Infotainment in on-line minute-by-minute sports commentaries. In: Lavric et al. (eds.): The Linguistics of Football. Tübingen: Narr. Read More