The Linguistics of Football

The first collection of articles on this topic is as international and varied as football itself. The publication covers media discourse, an online-dictionary of football terms, metaphors, the grammar of football commentary, emotions, football chants and football teams as multilingual eco-systems. Contributions from Sweden to Nigeria show how language operates in football. Would you know where football terms in Arabic come from? How does the German coach Otto Rehagel communicate with the Greek players? Which language did Materazzi use when insulting Zidane? Which special words do German, Polish and Igbo have for running, dribbling, penalty area and foul? In which country do the Canaries play the Roaring Lions? Where are the famous footballers enshrined in a 'Hall of Fame'? Which metaphors do Swedish, German and Russian football commentators tend to use? Are the British really less emotional than the Spanish when it comes to football commentating? And why are commentators from Russia to Italy speechless as soon as emotions really run high? That and much more is covered in this first wide-ranging compilation on the topic of football and language. Table of contents Eva Lavric - Introduction 1. Football terminology Thomas Schmidt - The Kicktionary: Combining corpus linguistics and lexical semantics for a multilingual football dictionary Konrad Szczesniak, Marcus Callies - “Europameisterschaft zu erdribbeln”: ‘Manner of obtainment’ constructions in sports reporting Chinedu Uchechukwu - Igbo verb roots and their realization of the ‘root schema’ within the football domain Anita Pavic Pintaric - English and German loanwords in Croatian football language Sebastian Sepek - Is English injuring Polish? An analysis of the spread of English terminology in (and through) Polish football Vladimir Dosev - Football lexis and phraseology in contemporary Bulgarian Mélanie Bernard - Football in France: Its history, vocabulary and place within French society Adel El Sayed - Egyptian colloquial Arabic and the British occupation: The case of football Muhammad Y Gamal - The final whistle: How football terminology took root in Arabic 2. Football language Zeljka Matulina and Zrinka Coralic - Idioms in football reporting Henrik Nordin - The use of conceptual metaphors by Swedish and German football commentators – A comparison Stephan Vierkant - Metaphor and live radio football commentary Eric A. Anchimbe - “Bend it like a banana” – Representing the ecology in live football commentaries Magnus Levin - “Hitting the back of the net just before the final whistle”: High-frequency phrases in football reporting Marietta Calderón - Kakᅢᄀ, Gallinas, gent blaugrana and other soccer-related onymic phenomena in the teaching of onomastics Khatijah Shamsuddin and Fauziah Kamaruddin - “Canaries versus roaring lions”: Language and football in Malaysian newspaper reporting Barbara Sonnenhauser - ‘Fidoness’ in football reporting: Proper names between demonstratives and common nouns 3. Football discourses Arnaud Richard - Televised football commentaries: Descriptions, narrations and representations of a non-victory. The European Club Championship Final 1976 (Bayern Munich vs AS Saint-Étienne) Julia Kuhn - Gianni Agnelli – ‘un tifoso vero’: Thoughts on the discourse construction of identities in Italian print media Richard W. Hallett and Judith Kaplan-Weinger - “The place every football fan wants to visit”: A discursive analysis of football and soccer halls of fame René Schiering - Regional identity in Schalke football chants Joanne Luhrs - Football chants and ‘blason populaire’: The construction of local and regional stereotypes Henryk Duda - The words ‘kibic’ (sports fan) and ‘pseudokibic’ (hooligan) in Polish. Remarks on names of sports enthusiasts used during sporting events 4. Football and media Jan Chovanec - Enacting an imaginary community: Infotainment in on-line minute-by-minute sports commentaries Torsten Müller - “He held his head in his hands as it flashed past the post”: How grammar and football interact Cornelia Gerhardt - Turn-by-turn and move-by-move: A multi-modal analysis of live TV football commentary Jim Walker - The footballer’s perfect – Are footballers leading the way? Anastasia Makarova - Deviations in sports commentator speech: Statistical and linguistic analysis John Wiredu and Jemima Anderson - Adjectives in football reporting 5. Media and discourse: Emotions Irene Theodoropoulou - Football register formation: The case of Greece’s triumph in EURO 2004 Kerstin Jung - World Cup football live on Spanish and Argentine television: The spectacle of language Eva Lavric, Gerhard Pisek, Wolfgang Stadler, Andrew Skinner and Erika Giorgianni (The Innsbruck Football Research Group) - “Zidane, Zidane, what have you done?” – Emotions on TV in six languages 6. Football and multilingualism Irene Giera,Erika Giorgianni, Eva Lavric, Gerhard Pisek, Andrew Skinner and Wolfgang Stadler (The Innsbruck Football Research Group) - The globalized football team: A research project on multilingual communication Engelbert Thaler - Two global languages: Football and English language teaching The Innsbruck Football Research Group - The football and language bibliography