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51ФИЛОЛОГИЯ
UDC 81 V.A. Razhina
Southern federal university Rostov-on-Don, Russia [email protected]
THE LANGUAGE PECULIARITIES OF SPORT DISCOURSE IN THE NATIONAL WORLD PICTURE: COGNITIVE AND PRAGMATIC APPROACHES
[Ражина В.А. Языковые особенности спортивного дискурса в национальной картине мира: когнитивный и прагматический подходы]
It has been examined the interrelations among the notions of metaphor, discourse, and creativity. Several important connections have been found. This paper is a part of an ongoing research on the core vocabulary of sport. Sport constitutes a significant arena within discourses about national identities are continually articulated. Language is always inserted into specific social and cultural contexts, and has specific functions. It takes that situation and re-presents it with its selected values and social expectations.
Key words: sport discourse, sport metaphors and metonymies, allusions, sport terms.
Language is an indispensable part of our everyday life. It allows interpersonal communication by means of cognitive processes and constitutes the expression, emotions and sensations. Each human activity affects its linguistic expression in terms of phonology, vocabulary, syntax and phraseology. So, the language structure isn't monolithic but it entails environmental, situational, professional and stylistic variations. As it's well known the modern approach to the linguistic awareness of today's audience demands some wordplay, introduction of a range of various bizzare linguistic means with unexpected connections. There is a special demand for wit, expressivity, ultimate freedom in associations and means of their linguistic implementation. On the other hand, a recipient has to manage to comprehend images, metaphorical manifestations of new understanding of the world.
Therefore readers' attention is often attracted by means of semantic potential of idioms, i.e., by the effect of understatement, a hint, allusion, wordplay, which all lead to intensification of connotative aspect of phraseological meaning. The
language of sport is something between code and jargon, it is certainly a vivid language that must represent the double aspect of sports: sport can be considered as a physical activity (so the language must possess special terms that refer to equipment, special movements and techniques) and a social pastime (so it is an entertainment, which has its products that go from TV- programs to big fanzines distribution). Both aspects contribute to a large and rapid-to-change vocabulary formed by specialized terms and multileveled words, influenced by advertisements, journalistic and sport markets. Considering the above mentioned double aspects of sport, it could be interesting to study the linguistic features on the one hand and the effects of the connected popularization on its semantics, syntax and its stylistic communication forms (rhetoric and pragmatic aspects). As a social phenomenon sport is inherently linked to the process of communication realized in society through language. The today sport discourse is of crucial importance because prominent cultural concepts such as masculinity, health, success, power as well as free enterprise are metaphorically represented, and thereby mediated through sport. Practicing sport creates different communication situations forming specific sport speech patterns minding social roles of the addresser and addressee. Newspaper articles present a valuable material for acquiring and comprehending pragmatic potential of sport discourse. Let's consider English headlines in the British newspaper The Times. They can be categorized as nominal (statement, question, command and exclamation), verbal and adverbial ones. For example: statement -'Van Persie could play against spurs' (The Times, 2014)
question: - 'Will O 'Sullivan quit for real this time? (The Times, 2014) exclamation: - 'Mourinko: a devil the Catalans know too well (The Times, 2014). The verbal statements: 'Augusta chairman says woods disappointed fans' 'The Times, 2010), 'Sepahan out of ACL' (The Times,2010)
Newspaper headlines being attractive and eye-catching ('little texts') are frequently understood as ' a riveting short-cut to the contents of newspapers (Infandou 2009, 699). Due to the necessity for maximum economy, expressiveness and informativeness, newspaper headlines are a type of text in which metaphor or metonymy often serve cognitive shortcut to a simpler and more effective presentation of complex phenomena. As it's admitted the animal metaphor is based on our experience with people and animals, 'allowing the mapping of generic information from the source domain to a specific instantiation in the target domain'
(Fontecha and Natalan: 2003, 774). E.g.: Sharks yam up wings, Coyotes gorged with duck meat, Panthers gobbled Buccaneers, Jaguars devour Titans, Bulldogs dismember Buffalos, Panthers rend Draggons . Here we are dealing with conceptualization - a victory over opponent. The other form of conceptualization is taming a wild animal (examples with gender marking):
It's interesting to observe communicative intentions of fans, coaches and commentators in sport discourse analysis. The fan's sport discourse appeals to the use of first person plural pronouns ('we' or 'us'), interjections ('yeah' or 'boo'), non-verbal praise (applause) and a game jargon. Coaches use language to encourage or criticize players reinforcing the importance of winning by using messages that envoke regret, either counterfactual regret or anticipatory one. Communicative functions of coaches' messages can be classified the following way: informing (organizing, instructing, defining), rewarding (encouraging and praising, showing gratitude), requesting (requesting information or action, responding and criticizing). On the whole coaches' utterances mainly consist of simple sentences and numerous statements lacking verbs when uttered in active contexts as opposed to during stationary activities. Some researches say that coaches frequently use basketball specific jargon ('block out', 'in the paint', etc.)
So, commentary speech ( a spoken account of events which actually taken place and marked by extensive narrative streches) is considered to be very emotional and expressive: 'Suddenly Ali looks very tired indeed, in fact Ali, at times now, looks as though he can barely lift his arms up... Oh he's got him with a right hand! He's got him! Oh you can't believe it. And I don't think Foreman's going to get up. He's trying to beat the count. And he's out! OH MY GOD he's won the title back at 32! Muhammad Ali!' ('The Gardian, 2012) Massive use of personal pronoun to communicate group identity or to create the myth. E.g: "We were the better team ", "I gave her a chance to get back", "I guess I'm back"
Sequential Progression, so the topic in sentences are always different, as the comment of one sentence becomes or derives the topic of the next.
E.g.: "Carlos Tevez had put United ahead after three minute, with a Wes Brown own goal leveling before Babel struck 13 minutes from time to secure their first home win against United for seven years".Adjectives are very important because of the emphasis
E.g.: "The wild challenge", "The vastly experienced winger", "Volcanic emotions", "Crazy pitcher","Vicious stuff".
Being spontaneous the sportcaster's speech is abundant with minor centences. For example: Rooney has the ball. Now Welback has it. He plays it to Lambart. Now Gerard has it. There are also interrogative sentences which aren't directed by anybody and at the same time they can't be regarded as rhetorical. For example:
Can they make something from it?
Can Arsenal go on to win the game?
Now what can they do to win this corner?
Such questions are uttered to convey expectations and are usually answered by the game itself very soon. The language of sport includes a great number of vocabulary items related to military and warfare, e.g. attack, offensive, defensive, surrender, shooting as well as special phrases and expressions which are then often transferred into general lexicon - hitting for six or jumping the gun, breasting the tape, below the belt, etc. While soccer (football), for example, implies vivid language to shock the reader or make him believe it is a matter of important fight between two or more "soldiers", tennis always refers to loyalty and respect for the adversary ("the opponent" in the selected report). Lexical items definitely signal one's membership of a group and sociolinguistic research could carry out important studies to help understanding this complex world that generates happiness and solidarity but also street fights and violence.
Nicknaming in sport is a separate issue for the analysis. In American culture nicknames are widely spread among players of baseball, basketball, soccer and golf. As for British nominations they refer to tennis, football and cricket players.
The main function of them is to mark the status of belonging to a prestigious community being used in the process of brand-building, reflecting sportsmen's talents and achievements: Iron Mike Tyson, Sparky Anderson, Michel 'Air' Jordan, 'Joltin' Joe DiMaggio. Sometimes they complimentary, and again they tend to satirize or caricature those to whom they are given. E.g. Mildred 'Babe' Didricson Zaharias. An outstanding golfer and tennis player, Babe was often compared to baseball's Babe Ruth, 'Pistol Pete' (tennis player Pete Sampras). Focusing on characterizing and evaluative (connotative) functions of descriptive names in sport area we can specify them in the terms of conceptual metaphors which are stressed through their comparison with dangerous people or animals, gargets, weapons, vehicles, etc.
Dangerous people: Chopper (Ron Harris, British footballer), Psycho (Stuart Pearce, British footballer), Terrorizer (Tara Dakides, US snowboarder), Assasin (Jack Tatum, American football player)
Animals: Tiger Tim (Tim Henman, British tennis player), The Red Bull (Alexi Lalas, US soccer player)
Weapons: Rocket (Roger Clemens, US baseball player), Trigger (Nicky Sauthall, British footballer), Tank (Eduardo Hurtado, US soccer player), Jigsaw (Martin Griffthits, British footballer)
Vehicles: Jerome 'The Bus' Bettis (American football player), A-train (Anthony Thomas, American football player).
There can be offered the other group of famous nicknames formed from pure honorifics: the King of Swing, Joe Cool, Mr. Baseball, The Great One, Tom 'Terrific' Seaver.
As a complex cognitive and conceptual network, the sport metaphor can be also represented as the following trinity: wrestling, gambling and racing, which are reflected in the metaphorical linguistic expressions:
1. wrestling - play a blinder, effective champion of the poor, Labour cheered, Labour Government ran out of energy and time, play fast and loose, to bat away accusations, fair play, strongest cards, parties more talented players.
2. Race - a flashy lightweight, to play well with the voters, front runners, running out of puff, desperate gamble Blair embarked on.
3. Gambling - put the Torries back in the game, gambling between Labour and Torries, etc.
Me can prove it by a number of examples which we consider here:
Mr Clarke's poll ratings as due to nothing more than name recognition and the loud splash of publicity when he plunged into the race last week. (Reasons not to be cheerful. September 8, 2012)
Worse, ICM revealed that Labour is well ahead of the Conservatives on seven out of the eight issues that voters say are most important to them. (High pitch, low politics. March 23, 2012)
Over the next few weeks there will be lots ofpolls and some of them—such as a Populus survey in the Times of April 5th—will suggest that the race between Labour and the Tories has become too close to call; a few may even give the Tories a narrow lead. (Why the system favours Labour. April 7, 2012)
As a discredited Labour government ran out of energy and time, he said, the office would beckon for the Lib Dems sooner rather than later. (Kennedy's paradox. September 23, 2008)
Mr Davis is a plausible candidate who has proved to be an effective shadow home secretary. With a well-organised campaign team around him, he is clearly, by some distance, the front-runner. (Doubts about Davis. June 16, 2008)
While analyzing conceptual metaphors and metonymies it's important to distinguish the source domain from which the cognitive processes transfer the similarity relations, and the target domain to which these concepts are applied. In the concept 'sport is fight' the targets like athletes or clubs (the conceptual target is sport) obtain their metaphorical expressions from the source domain concerning fights especially using words with a historical meaning such as gladiators, musketeers, cavalry, etc. A similar method is applied for analyzing metonymies. For instance, the target 'substitute' uses the source 'reserve bench' because they are connected by the concept container for the content: A good coach is judged by the good bench.
The boxer corresponding to the politician and the blows exchanged corresponding to the political statements made are explicitly present in the discourse in question. In addition, we also assume that both boxers want to win and that the participating politicians want the same (whatever winning means in politics). However, the manner in which the boxers box and politicians argue is not a part of the conventional framework of the metaphor. "Keeping an aloof distance" probably comes into the discourse as a result of the author thinking about the target domain of politics. In the author's view, politics regarding Meciar should be conducted in a cool, detached manner. What corresponds to this way of doing politics in boxing is that you box in a way that you keep an aloof distance from your opponent.
The metonymic sense of a location covers readings that follow a regular pattern as well as metonymies that do not. We follow the classification suggested by Markert and Nissim:
• literal (literal, geographic sense), e.g. The finals of the FIFA championship 2006 takes place in Berlin.
• metonymic - place-for-event (location referring to an event), e.g. Korea turned out to be a military catastrophe for the USA
• place-for-people (location for people at location), CapGov (capital city for government), e.g. Yesterday, Seoul and Peking agreed to start diplomatic relations.
• Off (location referring to official administration), e.g. Hamburg has decided to expand the harbor. Org (location for organization at location), e.g. After tying the score, Bayern pushed for a win with ten players only
• Pop (location for population), e.g. Germany is threatened with extinction by the declining birth-rate.
Now let us turn our attention to the examples elicited from British newspapers that exemplify the possible variations in phraseological units in their core use. The PU pull no punches - 'to deal with something honestly without hiding anything' (CDAI) can be presented as an example of core use with only one regular variation that is aimed at fitting the base form into the context properly. British Airways boss Willie Walsh pulls no punches in a column in the company's staff magazine, accusing the Unite union of trying to "destroy us" with industrial action. The Independent 2010-02-04.Business Diary: Walsh asks staff to sign up for battle
REFERENCES
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3. Leeuwen Theo van. The representation of social actors // Texts and practices: readings in Critical Discourse Analysis. London, 1996.
4. Markert K., Nissim M. Metonymy resolution as a classification task // Proceedings of the Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. Philadelphia, USA, 2002.
_28 марта 2016 г.
