“What genius!”: What characterizes Icelandic sports language in the media?

Abstract

A great number of young people participate in organized sports and/or follow sports directly in the media. If we take all media into account – printed media, broadcasted media and web media – one can assume that the language of sports influences the language of young people as it appears in their school work. Therefore, teachers can benefit from understanding and using the characteristics and advantages of sport language in communicating with their students, while being cautious against its possible disadvantages.
A register is a set of language features which follow certain language circumstances or text types, while dialect is a set of features that follow certain social factors. Based on that definition, one could argue that both definitions could apply to sports language. However, in this article, one prefers to look at sports language as a register dependent on several influential social factors. This article deals with a study on sports language in media. Its research question is: What is characteristic of Icelandic sports language in the media? Its methodology is mainly discourse and text analysis, with elements from other fields, like stylistics, language psychology and sociolinguistics. Data are taken from printed media and ethernet media (radio and TV) from 2008, with an addition from digital media from 2012. The original quantity of data collected is 1,782 data units, thereof 1,142 from TV, 423 from newspapers, 104 from radio, 72 from local papers and 41 from internet media. From these, 781 examples were analyzed further for this article. Besides humour, which is a dominant feature of the register, three characteristics were found: First is exaggerated language, as seen in hyperbole and unconditionality, including the use of superlatives and epithets or double exaggerations. It is by far the most frequent characteristics of sports language in the media. Indeed, exaggeration alone could make sports language a special Icelandic register. Examples: 1) sportsmen ar called stars, geniuses, champions and heroes; 2) every game is the most important game of the season; 3) Kevin Durant shows not only talents, but unique talents. Second are language innovations or deviations seen in neologisms, new phrases, semantic innovations and grammatical innovations. Some would undoubtedly call them errors or mistakes, but here they are assumed to be deviations from trends or traditions which could be rethorical gambits to enrich the text and attract the attention of the reader or listener. Examples: 1) sambaball; 2) to find one’s board = score with every shot; 3) to humiliate the opponent = to win; 4) thanks to (= because of) Ben Roethlisberger´s mistakes. Thirdly, we have poetic language like alliteration, rhyme and wordplay. Here we also have allusions to literature, other sports, conflicts – i.e. militarism, crimes and executions, traffic, machines and lastly nature. Examples: 1) The Saint against Satan; 2) The Hammers are fighting against the Ghost of defeat = as Grettir fought against the ghost Glámur; 3) Patrekur and his disciples (= players) in the Austrian handball team; 4) The handball team’s performance was under par (= from golf); 5) They killed (= defeated) Cameroon, 4:2; 6) They sold themselves dearly (= They never gave up); 7) The Icelandic machine (hrökk í gang) (= The Icelandic team beg