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Original Paper
DOI: 10.29025/2079-6021-2020-2-61-69
Stylistic Interpretation of English Football Vocabulary Items and Set Expressions in Publicistic Discourse
Alena Stulajterova^^
Matej Bel University (The Slovak Republic, Banska Bystrica) ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8647-6605; Researcher ID: L-2515-2018; Web of Science Author ID: L-2515-2018; e-mail: alena.stulajterova@umb.sk
Ivan Laluska
Matej Bel University (The Slovak Republic, Banska Bystrica) e-mail: laluskaivan@gmail.com
Received: 15.04.2020 /Accepted: 30.04.2020 /Publishedonline: 25.06.2020
Abstract: The paper dwells upon the study of English football vocabulary items and set expressions from the stylistic point of view. We applied Galperin's model of stylistic analysis in our research,therefore football expressions and phrases are evaluated in terms of their stylistic significance at the phonetic-phonological, lexical and syntactical levels. The linguistic corpus of research material of 670 excerpts comes from printed and online British media, namely the Guardian and its websites. In initial chapters, the paper outlines the past and present of football on the British Isles. As football vocabulary items and set expressions are used by sports journalists and reporters too, we present a concise diachronic and synchronic view of the British sports journalism as the sub-style of publicistic style. The core of the paper is focused on quantitative and qualitative stylistic analysis of the corpus. Furthermore,the corpus of the language material has been analysed according to the football activities related to the most popular sport worldwide. Our research revealed that the scope of the most frequent stylistic devices included in the English football vocabulary has been mainly focused on the lexical level (namely metonymy, metaphor, hyperbole and periphrasis). The results provide some interesting insights into the two-fold application of meaning (primary and transferred/contextual meaning) in the analysed expressions.
Keywords: stylistics, stylistic analysis, phonetic-phonological level, lexical level, syntactical level, football, vocabulary, set expression, sports journalism.
For citation: Stulajterova A., Laluska I. Stylistic Interpretation of English Football Vocabulary Itemsand Set Expressions in Publicistic Discourse. Current Issues in Philology and Pedagogical Linguistics, 2020, no 2, pp. 61-69 (In Engl.).
Оригинальная статья УДК 811.111
DOI: 10.29025/2079-6021-2020-2-61-69
Стилистическая интерпретация английской футбольной лексики и устойчивых выражений в публицистическом дискурсе
Алена Штулайтерова
Университет Матея Бела (Словацкая Республика, Банска Быстрица) ORCID ID: 0000.0001-8647-6605; Researcher ID: L-2515-2018; Web of Science Author ID: L-2515-2018; e-mail: alena.stulajterova@umb.sk
Иван Лалушка
Университет Матея Бела (Словацкая Республика, Банска Быстрица) e-mail: laluskaivan@gmail.com
Получена: 15.04.2020 /Принята: 30.04.2020 /Опубликована онлайн: 25.06.2020
Резюме: В статье исследуются единицы английской футбольной лексики и устойчивые выражения с стилистической точки зрения. В нашем исследовании мы применили модель стилистического анализа И.Р. Гальперина, таким образом, единицы футбольной лексики и устойчивые выражения оцениваются с точки зрения их стилистической значимости на фонетико-фонологическом, лексическом и синтаксическом уровнях. Лингвистический корпус фактического материала, состоящего из 670 отрывков, был собран из печатных и электронных британских масс-медиа, а именно: из газеты «Гардиан» и соответствующих веб-сайтов. В начальных разделах статьи речь идет о прошлом и настоящем футбола на Британских островах. Поскольку единицы футбольной лексики и устойчивые выражения также используются спортивными журналистами и репортерами, мы представляем краткий диахронический и синхронический обзор британской спортивной журналистики как подстиля публицистики. Основная часть статьи фокусируется на количественном и качественном стилистическом анализе корпуса. Кроме того, корпус языкового материала был проанализирован в соответствии с видами деятельности, имеющей отношение к этому самому популярному виду спорта в мире. Результаты нашего исследования показывают, что наиболее частотные стилистические приемы выборки в основном сконцентрированы на лексическом уровне, а именно: метонимия, метафора, гипербола и перифраз. Результатами проведенного исследования являются новые интересные данные о двойственном использовании значения (первичного и переносного/ контекстуального) в проанализированных выражениях.
Ключевые слова: стилистика, стилистический анализ, фонетический уровень, лексический уровень, синтаксический уровень, футбол, лексика, устойчивые выражения, спортивная журналистика.
Для цитирования: Штулайтерова А., Лалушка И. Стилистическая интерпретация английской футбольной лексики и устойчивых выражений в публицистическом дискурсе. Актуальные проблемы филологии и педагогической лингвистики. 2020. №2 . C. 61-69.
Introduction
"At one point, he even nutmeggedMaradona."
(Lowe, 2017)
We can reasonably expect that having read this utterance and not being a football fan, the reader would not understand what happened and whathe did to/with Maradona. Even if a potential reader is not interested in the game, it is very likely that s/he knows who Maradona is, still full comprehension of the sentence might pose a problem. However, the overwhelming majority of those who love this game would explain, without any hesistation, that he simply directed the ball between the legs of the legendary Argentinian (it is a kind of humiliation for the player to be nutmegged).
In the course of years, the most popular game worldwide has not only developed its own tactics, laws, overall quality of training sessions, etc., but also its own expressive means. Thus, for instance, diving does not mean swimming under the water surface, but pretending to be fouled in order to win an advantage for the te-am;or similarly, dummy is not used for describing a not very clever person, but a move to confuse an opponent.
The key linguistic works from which we draw most material and linguistic knowledge have been Investi-
gating English Style by Crystal and Davy, Stylistics by Galperin, and Linguistic Stylistics by Missikova. Prior to any attempt at stylistic analysis, it is necessary to take into account the fact, that language is "... an intricate web of levels, layers and links. Thus, any utterance or piece of text is organised through several distinct levels of language" [1: 5]. However, before we take a closer look at those levels of stylistic analysis, it is fundamental to understand what the stylistic analysis is and what its function is. Missikova defines stylistic analysis as a kind of interpretation of discourse which concentrates on expressive means, the way of expressing and its purpose [2]. The function of stylistic analysis is to inform the reader about the style of the author and appraise the style's effectiveness and characteristics, as well as evaluate those features in discourse which give style its aesthetic merit [3]. All this underlines the importance of the stylistic analysis for the process of discourse comprehension. It helps us not only to understand what exactly the author's message is, but it also gives us a clue why the particular expressive means have been used.
Literature review
The roots of the most popular sport worldwide date back tothe rule of The Han dynasty in China (206 BCE - 221 CE) where people played a game called cuju. The translation of the name is kick-ball. What it had in common with a modern football were two teams on a marked pitch, a ball, and goals at each end of the pitch [4]. Among other oldest "predecessors" of football were Sepak Raga played in the Malay Peninsula, Marn Gook invented by Aboriginal Australians, and also a very popular Japanese game called Kemari [4].
The English version of football dates back to the 1300's. In the 18th century, the game was played at schools and a significant rise of its popularity called for a set of rules to be followed by all the teams since nearly every club had been playing according to its own rules [5]. The first attempt came at Freemason's Tovern in London in 1863 where representatives from twelve clubs met to agree on the laws of the game [6]. It required several meetings until a single set of rules was agreed upon andan official Football Association (FA) was established. Thus, not only the rules came into existence, but also the governing body of this game in England was born. It did not take long until a competition was announced. The Football Association created the FA Cup in 1871. Although only fifteen of the fifty members decided to enter the first season, the competition soon rose in popularity and became the most prestigious one in England for a long time [7]. The league was expanded in 1892 and eight years later it counted thirty-six teams. In the early 1920s, four leagues had ninety-two clubs. The significant milestone came in 1992 when the Football League was replaced by the Premier League; the change included more money to be invested in the game and more to be distributed to clubs [8].
In the course of time, English football created its own vocabulary. Football terms, jargon and slang expressions had been devoloped gradually by players, coaches, fans, sports journalists and commentators [9]. The history of sports journalism in Britain dates back to 1727 when the first Racing Calendar was published. It offered readers basic information including the names of owners, the conditions of horse races, and the results [10]. In the Victorian era the newspapers became the main source of information. The Daily Telegraph, as well as The Manchester Guardian, The Scotsman and The Liverpool Post started to be printed every day each week in 1855. Approximately at that time the first important sporting events began to appear being attractive topics to be covered - namely golf, rugby and football.
The father of British sports jounalism is generally considered to be Pierce Egan who covered bare-knuckle fighting and horce racing for The Weekly Despatch starting in 1816 [11]. However, thefirst person connected with football sports journalism is Charles Alcock - former footballer, referee and a secretary of the FA. He became a/the football sub-editor at The Sportsman and The Field. His skilfulness can be illustrated by the fact, that he was able to pursuade minor football clubs to pay two shillings for their results being properly reported and publicised in The Sportsman. Adding to that, it was him who launched the first FA-authorised Football Annual in 1867 [11]. By 1900 the number of Saturday sport papers covering local and regional football teams rose to 18. The People, that recorded a respectable circulation of 4,6 million after World War II, devoted a third of its pages to sport with football in the leading position.
The arrival of the Internet in the mid-1990s represented an enormous change. One of the advantages was the fact, that newspapers were no longer limited by the number of pages and allowed to upload the content on the web. In recent years The Guardian completely accomodated to the demands of the modern world and became the first to lauch its web version in the UK. The football section, full of respectable contributors, is currently led by Daniel Taylor who has been named Football Journalist of the Year for the third successive year. Furthermore, The Guardian won the price for the best sports website and Sean Ingle was awarded the Specialist Correspondent prize. Because of the quality of the service that readers receive, we chose this quality
press representative as a source of the language material for our corpus.
The aim of the paper
Generally, stylistic research is focused on the study oflanguage varieties in as much detail as possible, so that we can point to the significant featureswhich characterize them and understand the restrictions on their use. More specifically, theaimsof most stylistic studies are: 1. to identify and analyze those features of language which are restricted to certain kinds of social and linguistic contexts; 2. to explain why such features have been used, as opposed to other alternatives; 3. to classify these features into categories according to their function [12]. In place of 'feature' we use Galperin's term 'stylistic device', which he defines as "a conscious and intentional choice of a typical structural and/or semantic property of a language unit (neutral or expressive), promoted to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model" [13: 29-30]. We have an ambition to prove that football vocabulary is not created only by terms and jargonisms. Numerous words and phrases belonging to this sphere are stylistically significant and stylistic devices included in them function distinctively.
Therefore, the main aim of the paperis to identify and analyse English football specific vocabulary items and set phrasesfrom the point of view of stylistics; the stylistic significance detected in them will be analysed at the phonetic-phonological, lexical, and syntactical levels. These levels of language are identified in the stylistic analysis of our corpus, which in turn makes the analysis itself more organized and principled. However, what is absolutely central to our research is that, especially in sports journalism, these levels are inter-connected: they interpenetrate and depend upon one another. We are aware of the fact that this vocabulary has been devoloped by players, coaches, fans, sports journalists and commentators to be subsequently commonly used by all who belong to, or consider themselves to belong to the world of football. Therefore, the websites of respected print medium - The Guardian - were chosen as the main source of linguistic material for our research. On one hand, they offer much of the content of the print versions online, on the other hand, so called minute-by-minute reports from which we expect most terms to be obtained, are available exclusively online.
Methods of research
Our linguistic research required a representative corpus of language material. In the first phase we selected games (two World Cup matches, two Champions League matches and the same number from the Premier League) which were covered online in The Guardian. In the second phase we analysed the minute-by-minute reports searching for specific football vocabulary items and set expressions and highlighted them in the text. Subsequently we put them down on excerpts - each excerpt included the vocabulary item or set expression itself, the date, as well as the stylistic device (if applicable), the language layer and the football activity to which a word or a phrase refers to. After that, we selected excerpts which reported various kinds of stylistic significance. In our stylistic research we applied Galperin's model of stylistic analysis so we evaluated significant examples systematically according to language levels (stylistic devices at the phonetic-phonological, lexical and syntactical levels). Finally we analysed our vocabulary items and set expressions from the point of view of various football activities they describe or characterise.
Results and Discussion
As for the monitored English minute-by-minute reports, we found out the overall number of 670 football vocabulary items and set expressions. Overwhelming majority of them belongs to the categories of terms (220) and jargon (175). As far as expressions comprising stylistically significant features, the most frequent stylistic devices aremetonymy (104), cliché (58) and metaphor (44). There were also 20 examples of hyperbole, 12 repetitions, 11 alliterations (especially in the headlines), and 10 ellipses. Minor frequency of occurence reported parenthesis, periphrasis, parallel constructions, onomatopoeia, and simile. Having in mind that the majority of the language material was taken from reports which are live coverages reacting and describing quickly what is just going on, these results do not come as a surprise. Reporters simply do not have time for a lengthy and flowery description of the actions. Quite the opposite, they have to use as few words as possible and be very specific. Moreover, a football match is a duel between two clubs or countries. The reporters cannot avoid naming them very often which results in a frequent use of metonymy. Metonymyisa substitution of a name for another name, denoting a person or an object by using the name of another object which stands to the former in close, typical or representative relation [3: 44]. Such a close relation may usually be contained in the relation between the cause and the effect, the part and the whole, the thing and the person who usually has or carries it, for example: "Firminho and Keita put Reds in control." There are many kinds of metonymy but the most frequent one in the football is synecdoche totum pro parte which names a whole when a part is meant; for example: "Manchester won the FA Cup." (not the whole city, just Manchester United football team). This
explains why the game-related terms and metonymy have such superiority in numbers. Just to be more specific, category"terms" included particlularly expressions denoting the laws of the game (e.g. names of objects, actions, positions of players such as crossbar, byline, red card, defender, tackle, challenge, and the like).
Table 1 presents the overwiew of football-related terms that are classified in the categories they belong to and their approximate overall percentage according to frequency of their occurence.
CATEGORY NUMBER OF TERMS PERCENTAGE
TERMS 220 32,5%
JARGON 172 25%
METONYMY 104 15%
CLICHE 58 9%
METAPHOR 44 7%
HYPERBOLE 20 3%
REPETITION 12 2%
ALLITERATION 11 2%
ELLIPSIS 10 1.5%
ONOMATOPOEIA 8 1.2%
PARENTHESIS 6 0.9%
PERIPHRASIS 4 0.6%
PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION 2 0.3%
OVERALL 671 100%
Table 1. Football-related vocabulary items and set expressions according to the frequency of their occurence
Lexical stylistic devices are represented with fivetypes (metonymy, cliché, metaphor, hyperbole and periphrasis) and with a total number of 230 entries. Periphrasis is a stylistic device based on the use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter and plainer form of expression, often associated with formal or elevated styles of speech [14]. In football discourse, periphrasis is used to avoid tedious repetition; for instance, the players in red shirts instead of FC Liverpool.
Lexical stylistic devices are followed by syntactical stylistic devices with four representatives (repetition, ellipsis, parenthesis and parallel constructions) but with a significantly fewer number of entries (30). Ellipsis occurs when some essential structural element (which is obvious from the context) is omitted from a sentence or clause. Ellipsis is a typical feature of colloquial language and appears mostly in conversation, so its stylistic significance is not very powerful in the speech of characters - it rather makes written conversation more natural and fluent [3]. In sports journalism articles and auxiliary verbs are often omitted, so ellipsis functions as and economical means of expression; e.g. "Chelsea's Drinkwater charged with drink-driving." Phonetic-phonological stylistic devices have two representatives (alliteration and onomatopoeia) and 19 entries. Alliteration (initial rhyme) is a stylistic device which aims at imparting a melodic effect to an utterance. Alliteration is based on the repetition of similar or identical sounds, particularly at the beginning of successive words [13]. In sports journalism, alliteration is the most effective stylistic device in newspaper headlines and its function is to attract attention of readers or listeners; e.g.: "Chelsea better on the ball."
Table 2 shows the overwiew of football-related vocabulary items and set expressions which comprise stylistically significant features. The stylistic devices they comprise are classified according to language levels and their approximate overall percentage. Subsequent to the table, examples of the vocabulary items and set expressions are presented.
LEXICAL LEVEL 230 83%
METONYMY 104
CLICHÉ 58
METAPHOR 44
HYPERBOLE 20
PERIPRASIS 4
SYNTACTICAL LEVEL 30 11%
REPETITION 12
ELLIPSIS 10
PARENTHESIS 6
PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION 2
PHONETIC-PHONOLOGICAL LEVEL 19 6%
ALLITERATION 11
ONOMATOPOEIA 8
OVERALL 275 100%
Table 2. Stylistically significant football-related vocabulary items and set expressions according to language levels
Representative examples from the corpus:
TERMS "...crossed the goal-line."
JARGON
"A cute chipped pass by Tripier to Lingard, who ... "
CLICHÉ "They are dominating possession."
METONYMY
"... when Liverpool started pumping balls into the penalty area."
PARENTHESIS
"They know they may need another - if Inter score against PSV - and also that Barcelona could score again, too."
PERIPHRASIS "Mauricio Pochettino's men have to..."
PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION / REPETITION "Every Liverpool touch is being booed, every Liverpool mistake is being jeered."
HYPERBOLE
"...shows the ball was 0.00000000000000001 mm from going over the line..."
ALLITERATION(RHYTHM / DETACHED CONSTRUCTION) "Scattergun singings, lazy thinking, now the drop - what next for Fulham?"
ONOMATOPOEIA
"Peep!"
ELLIPSIS
"Spurs have worked some tremendous openings so far but been terribly wasteful."
METAPHOR
"It had been labelled Mission Impossible after Spartak took only one point from their opening three Group B ties."
We can conclude that first four categories with the highest number of entries were terms, jargon, metonymy and cliché that "won" by a large margin in comparison to other categories. However, this proportion is absolutely logical, since we were focused on football-related terms in football coverages. While in the English minute-by-minute reports the reporters used mostly football terms to describe the actions on the pitch.
The results of the analysis from the football activities point of view
Furthermore, we tried to find out what kind of activities are described in minute-by-minute reports and subsequently analyse the results from the English papers. Therefore, during the process of monitoring, we classified the entries into the following football-related categories:
^ defending (all activities regarding team defense - tackles, challenges, goalkeeper saves) ^ passing (passes, crosses)
^ moving (movements of players, team as a unit, runnings with the ball, runnings into free spaces) ^ shooting (any kind of shots) ^ finishing (including scoring goals)
^ game (everything which cannot be categorised in the activities above, e.g. players' positions, talking about tables, tactics, predictions).
Table 3 presents the English minute-by-minute reports including most often the game-related terms with 283 from the total number of 671 entries, followed by the terms describing defending, passing, moving, finishing and shooting. For a better understanding we include one example of each category.
CATEGORY NUMBER OF ENTRIES PERCENTAGE
GAME 283 42%
DEFENDING 109 16.2%
PASSING 103 15.3%
MOVING 86 13%
FINISHING 47 7%
SHOOTING 43 6.5%
OVERALL 671 100%
Table 4. Terms describing football activities - English reports
GAME
"It is still in Liverpool hands, so it is interesting to look at their fixtures."
DEFENDING
"Alisson dives bravely at his feet and concedes a corner. "
PASSING
"He dribbles inside and plays a pass to left."
MOVING
"He dribbles inside and plays a pass to left."
SHOOTING
"Firmino picks up a possession and hammers a shot goalwards."
FINISHING "... when Sergio Aguero put them into the lead."
The results in most categories (excluding the game category) were expected. We assume that it might reflect the tendency of English reporters to fill the dull moments of the game when not much happens on the pitch by interesting or summarizing remarks in order to keep attention of the readers, their proclivity to express their opinions, as well as the habit to include a preview, the half-time and the post-match summary in their reports. These are the parts of the commentaries which comprehend mostly game category-related terms.
Conclusion
The main aim of the article was to identify English football specific vocabulary items and set phrases and analyse them from the point of view of stylistics; the stylistic significance identified in them was analysed at the phonetic-phonological, lexical, and syntactical levels. We analysed 671 examples and found out that the category of terms was the most frequent one. Among the stylistically significant expressions, the most represented categories were lexical stylistic devices, namely metonymy, metaphor and hyperbole.
As the language of reporters is really concise (except some dull moments during the games when they added several interesting remarks); reporters used a lot of metonymy in order to avoid tedious repetition. Furthermore, we encountered many examples of jargon - words and phrases difficult to understand for non-football fans. Due to the limited number of the monitored games the results cannot be generalised, however we assume that they are not.
References
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3. Stulajterová A., Jesenská P. English Stylistics. Banská Bystrica, 2013.
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Список литературы
1. Simpson P. Stylistics. New York, 2004.
2. Missíková G. Linguistic Stylistics. Nitra, 2003.
3. Stulajterová A., Jesenská P. English Stylistics. Banská Bystrica, 2013.
4. Goldblatt D. The Ball is Round. London, 2007.
5. Stulajter I. On Some Diplomatic Aspects of Organising FIFA World Cup 2022 in Quatar. In Journal of Modern Science, 2017;2(33):261-269.
6. Akdeniz C. History of football. London, 2016.
7. Stulajter I., Barteková D., Stulajter M. Sportová diplomacia (Sports Diplomacy). Banská Bystrica, 2013.
8. Squires D. The Illustrated History of Football. London, 2016.
9. Jesenská P. Essentials of Sociolinguistics. Ostrava, 2010.
10. Stofer K., Schaffer J., Rosenthal B. Sports Journalism. Plymouth, 2010.
11. Steen R. Sports Journalism. New York, 2015.
12. Crystal D., Davy D. Investigating English Style. London, 1988.
13.Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Moscow, 1977.
14. Wales K. Dictionary of Stylistics. New York, 2011.
Bionote:
Alena Stulajterova, PhD, Head of the Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University.
Ee-mail: alena.stulajterova@umb.sk
Address: 974 01 Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, 40 Tajovskeho str., Matej Bel University
Ivan Laluska, Post-Graduate Student, Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Matej Bel University.
Ee-mail: laluskaivan@gmail.com
Address: 974 01, Banska Bystrica, Slovakia, 40 Tajovskeho str., Matej Bel University Сведения об авторах:
Алена Штулайтерова, PhD, зав. кафедрой англистики и американистики, Университет Матея Бела, Банска Быстрица, Словацкая Республика. Ee-mail: alena.stulajterova@umb.sk
Адрес: 97401, Банска Быстрица, Словацкая Республика, Tайoвскeгo 40, Университет Матея Бела
Иван Лалушка, аспирант, кафедра англистики и американистики, Университет Матея Бела, Банска Быстрица, Словацкая Республика . Ee-mail: laluskaivan@gmail.com
Адрес: 97401, Банска Быстрица, Словацкая Республика , Tайoвскeгo 40, Университет Матея Бела.
