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The Language of Football: an English-Polish Contrastive Study
Abstract
The present work is a sociolinguistic study of English and Polish football language, investigated as a special language with broad public appeal, which consists of several situationally-motivated varieties, employed in a number of communicative settings. The book, which draws on the theory of register, as developed by Halliday, Biber, Conrad and other researchers, aims to demonstrate the range of cross-language and cross-register variation. Its major empirical findings come from corpus-based investigations of footballers' communication on the field of play, the lexico-grammatical and discourse features of football reporting in the media (match reports, television and online written commentary) as well as football metaphors, which are approached from a cognitive perspective.
... Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural studies in this field seem to represent the most extensive research strand (e.g. Bergh and Ohlander 2012a;Jung 2008;Lewandowski 2013;Anchimbe 2008;Rossing and Skrubbeltrang 2016). As for English, it is rightly noted by Bergh & Ohlander that linguistic research into the language of the so-called 'people's game' , or one of the most popular sports in the world invented by the English, remains surprisingly limited, especially in comparison to other fields of English for specific purposes (2012a: 19-21). ...
... futbolo reprezentacija (English, literally, 'representation in football'). In this context, the following comments can be made: (i) in Lithuanian, the loanword reprezentacija is a hardly ever used word with the general connotation of 'representing' and does not occur in any specialist dictionary of sports language; (ii) the whole compositional path of the L1 expression is transferred to L2; the transfer includes all of the semantic components, i.e. the Polish reprezentacja and piłka nożna (on the language of football, see Lewandowski, 2013); (iii) the concept of 'football team' integrated in this manner sounds alien in Lithuanian, at least from the pragmatic perspective; (iv) in opposition to this, the main component of the Lithuanian specialist term futbolo rinktinė is the noun rinktinė, which carries the specialist meaning of 'national team'. Its propositional ICM includes the prototypical meaning of the Lithuanian verb rinkti = Eng. ...
Lexical transfer in L2 acquisition and its cognitive categories (a case study of Lithuanian as a foreign language)
... Nie wspominano natomiast o rozprawach poświęconych językowi piłkarskiemu (np. Wiśnicki 2004;Koper 2013;Lewandowski 2013), co jedynie zaznaczam dla porządku. ...
... Lewandowski (2013) I argue that the language of football is a special language with broad public appeal. This view is shared by other analysts (cf. ...
This paper aims to propose a methodological approach to studying lexico-grammatical variation within special languages. Drawing on evidence from football language, the author argues that a special language has a two-level structure, i.e. it is composed of several subdomains (areas of communicative activity), within which it is possible to distinguish registers (varieties linked with particular situations of use), which are marked by distinctive features of grammar and vocabulary. The register perspective is viewed as a useful tool for accounting for patterns of variation.
Prefixoides super- and mega- as means of football lexicon renewal: Ukrainian and Polish parallels
The article describes the neologisms with the prefixoides super- and megarecorded in the modern Ukrainian and Polish football Internet discourse. Those innovations add meaningfulness and dynamism to a text, render the word semantics more expressive and intensive, and contribute to the economy of language resources. In Ukrainian and Polish football Internet discourse the prefixoides super- and mega- are synonyms, and using them as structural components of neologism depends on the speaker’s language and aesthetic tastes. The prefixoidal innovations are used for the nomination of different football processes, phenomena and actions, such as: a) football games; b) game moments; c) hits on the ball; d) scored goals; e) tactical moves by a team; f) individual players’ technical moves; g) results of matches etc. Most often, the neologisms with the prefixoides super- and mega- contain the seme ‘the best; exceeding the level of others,’ while some are based on the semes ‘powerful,’ ‘intensive,’ ‘effective,’ ‘the most modern.’ When added to an anthroponym, neologisms which contain the prefixoides super- and mega- stress the football player’s professionalism. In Ukrainian and Polish football Internet discourse, the formative base for prefixoidal neologism are usually borrowed lexemes, although in Polish there is a stronger tendency to use native lexemes in this capacity, some of which do not have direct counterparts in Ukrainian, for example, superłącznik, megawolej. The football lexicons of both languages absorbed military words to foster expressiveness by likening football to warfare. On the whole, the aspects of football described by the neologisms lead to the conclusion that for the speakers football is interesting as a game, but not as business or a commercial product.
Prefiksoidy super- i mega- jako środki odnowienia leksyki związanej z piłką nożną: paralele ukraińskie i polskie
Artykuł opisuje neologizmy z prefiksoidami super- i mega- zanotowane we współczesnym ukraińskim i polskim dyskursie internetowym dotyczącym piłki nożnej. Te innowacje nadają tekstowi wyrazu i dynamizują go, zwiększają ekspresywność i wyrazistość znaczenia słów, sprzyjają ekonomii środków wyrazu. Zarówno w ukraińskim, jak i polskim dyskursie internetowym dotyczącym piłki nożnej prefiksoidy super- i mega- są synonimami, a ich użycie jako elementów składowych neologizmów zależy od wyborów estetycznych mówiącego. Prefiksoidalne innowacje występują jako nazwy różnych procesów, zjawisk i działań związanych z piłką nożną: a) meczów; b)fragmentów gry; c) uderzeń piłki; d) goli; e) posunięć taktycznych drużyny piłkarskiej; f)technicznych zagrań poszczególnych graczy; g)wyników meczów itd. Neologizmy z prefiksoidami super- i mega- oparte są najczęściej na semie ‘najlepszy; na wyższym poziomie niż inni’, kiedy indziej zaś na semach ‘potężny’, ‘intensywny’, skuteczny’, ‘najnowocześniejszy’. W połączeniu z antroponimem neologizmy z prefiksoidami super- i mega- służą podkreśleniu profesjonalizmu gracza. W ukraińskim i polskim dyskursie internetowym związanym z piłką nożną za podstawę do tworzenia neologizmów prefiksoidalnych służą zwykle leksemy będące zapożyczeniami, przy czym w języku polskim nieco częściej występuje tendencja do używania w tym przypadku rodzimych leksemów, niekiedy niemających bezpośrednich odpowiedników w języku ukraińskim, np. superłącznik, megawolej. W obu językach opisujące piłkę nożną słownictwo zawiera słowa związane z wojskowością, co pozwala zwiększyć wyrazistość piłkarskiego języka przez zrównanie zmagań piłkarskich z działaniami wojennymi. Analiza określanych przez badane neologizmy aspektów futbolu skłania do wniosku, że użytkowników obu języków piłka nożna interesuje jako sport, nie zaś jako rodzaj działalności gospodarczej czy komercyjny produkt.
The book is aimed at examining Anglicisms within the language of football in two Slavic languages, Polish and Russian. The comparison of the number and character of this group of English-based borrowings in the languages was performed on the basis of two types of texts representing two varieties of the football language – football regulations and online football press articles.
The book consists of five chapters. The first four of them constitute a theoretical introduction into the subject, whereas the last one bids to make a contribution to the present state of knowledge of this field.
The first chapter describes the concept of linguistic borrowing as one of the results of the phenomenon of language contact, as well as various classifications of borrowings and the processes of adaptation of linguistic borrowings.
A general overview of Polish-English and Russian-English language contacts, as well as of Anglicisms in Polish and Russian and their adaptation at the levels of orthography, phonology, morphology and semantics is presented in the second chapter.
The third chapter characterises language for special purposes and juxtaposes it with the concepts of language for general purposes and jargon.
The fourth chapter is concerned with the language for special purposes where the Anglicisms were analysed – the language of football, divided into sub-languages in accordance with the remarks of previous studies.
The last chapter analyses Anglicisms in Polish and Russian translations of FIFA Laws of the Game and a corpus of 84 online football press articles (taken from the online issuses of two Polish newspapers: Przegląd Sportowy and Sport.pl [Gazeta Wyborcza], as well as two Russian newspapers: Спорт-экспресс and Российская Газета).
The present paper addresses the problem of syntactic transfer in Polish-English non-literary translations performed by inexperienced translators. It is argued that many grammatical errors and stylistic inadequacies result from the translator’s failure to recognize that the two languages exhibit different stylistic preferences. Polish syntax is more reliant on nominal style, which is marked by a high proportion of nouns (notably nominalizations) that sometimes form elaborate noun phrases. English (except for very formal registers) to a larger extent than Polish tends to favor verbal style, in which actions are more frequently depicted by verbs and verbal modifiers. This hypothesis is supported by quantitative and qualitative data from both languages. The latter part of the paper shows that syntactic and stylistic problems in Polish-English translation can be overcome by denominalization – a translation procedure which consists in transforming noun phrases containing abstract nouns into clauses. Its application enhances target text clarity, contributing thus to the production of plain and natural-sounding prose.
The article presents the history of football lexicography (with German and Polish) and the problems of multilingualism in the football. We discuss some problems of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries, e.g. non-alphabetical order, false friends, multi-word units etc.
Introduction Since its publication in 1985, the outstanding 1,800-page Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, by Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, has been the definitive description of the grammar of English and an in-. dispensable reference for any research in the analysis or generation of English that attempts serious coverage of the syntactic phenomena of the language. The new Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English, by Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan, is an important complement to the earlier work, extending and sometimes revising the descriptions of Quirk et al., by means of an extensive corpus analysis by the five authors and their research assistants. Now, the bookshelf of any researcher in English linguistics is incomplete without both volumes. Like Quirk et al. (hereafter CGEL), Biber and his colleagues attempt a detailed description of all the syntactic phenomena of English. But