It is said that sport is a language that everyone can understand. That it transcends culture, race, religion, sex, and language barriers. But within these sporting communities, a certain language style can be seen throughout newspapers, magazines, webpages, blogs, and vlogs.
Sport takes phrases and words from all other aspects of language, and manipulates them to suit the intended use. You wouldn’t expect a brutish sports fan to use words such as the likes of stalwart, profligate, adjudged and diminutive, but they do.
Millions of years of sports writings have developed the sporting language into what has become today. Just as important as match reviews, and player comparisons, the quick thinking of the onlooking commentators has brought phrases and
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In theatrical terms a sporting event can be seen as a theatre; the stadium as the theatre building, the playing surface as the arena, the players as actors, the coach as the director, and the game as the performance. In a religious sense, the match is the religious ceremony, and the stadium as the temple. Some players are also held in such high regard as you can see fans worshiping them and describing them as gods.
Not only does sport take language from elsewhere, but the language that has developed through sport has also found it’s way into other aspects of life. Recently it can be seen that politics has borrowed many metaphors from the sporting dictionary.
In the US common metaphors can be drawn from baseball, American football and boxing. Phrases like “the bottom of the ninth” (the final, dramatic innings of a baseball game), “knock-out punch”, “hail mary” (A last-minute chance to score a touchdown and win a game), “hit a home run”, and “front-runner” are all now fairly common phrases amongst the US political scene.
Not only in the US but across the globe can sporting language double as the language of
There can be no question that sport and athletes seem to be considered less than worthy subjects for writers of serious fiction, an odd fact considering how deeply ingrained in North American culture sport is, and how obviously and passionately North Americans care about it as participants and spectators. In this society of diverse peoples of greatly varying interests, tastes, and beliefs, no experience is as universal as playing or watching sports, and so it is simply perplexing how little adult fiction is written on the subject, not to mention how lightly regarded that little which is written seems to be. It should all be quite to the contrary; that our fascination and familiarity with sport makes it a most advantageous subject for the skilled writer of fiction is amply demonstrated by Mark Harris.
When it comes to sports, I have a natural tendency to zone out. Until the fourth paragraph of his essay, Gould nearly lost my attention with his references to Turin, Edwardian Piltdown Man and the Cardiff Giant. When multiple figures were lost on me at such an early stage, I felt young and hopelessly naïve. Feeling intimidated, I said to my partner, hoping her advanced age wouldn’t prove helpful, “I’m reading this article and it’s supposed to be understandable to the general audience, but I don’t k...
Foer vowed to show us how the game of soccer can impact different regions and cultures. He indicated us how these relationships (between different nations and beliefs), while there, are hard to apprehend on the global scale. But trough soccer, these relationships reveal themselves in a hesitant fashion.
The imaginative recreation of sport as play has become the world. There is not the slightest sign here of any other reality; even the existence of a creator external to the play-world may now only be inferred (Berman 219).
Link to argument: Throughout his writing, Reilly incorporates basic, simple, unvarnished diction in order to establish a casual, humorous tone, to appeal to his audience of sports magazine readers, and to draw a parallel between his language and the accessibility of sports. By opting to utilize simple words like “real,” and “guys,” he appeals to individuals that enjoy reading sports magazines. Sports magazines are usually considered to be easy, casual, light reads, and had Reilly chosen to write with vocabulary of a higher level, he would have lost the interest of his primary audience. Not only does Reilly’s selection of simple language appeal to his audience, it helps to drive home his point that sports are able to bring people together. This is because, while not all people can understand high level literature and vocabulary words, everyone can understand casual language. By writing on a level that all people can understand, Reilly makes the world of sports even more accessible and enjoyable for everyone to experience
In Europe, Football has been compared to a ritual- a must do or have an aspect of social life (King, par 1). Soccer in this part of the world is idolized and makes up a big part of income generating fields. According to King (par 5), sports, specifically soccer in Europe forms a landmark that shapes the politics and sociology of a people, which then translates into the development of
"Football Quotes, Great Football Quotes, Football Sayings Quotations." Famous Quotes, Great Quotes. Web. 29 Apr. 2011. .
Known as the world’s most popular sport, professional soccer has helped create and define different groups of people around the world for longer than a century. The hoopla surrounding teams, geographic areas fans dwell in, and political ideals associated with individual clubs have carved an identity for millions of supporters whose heart and soul becomes dedicated to their favorite players, stadiums, and coaches. Soccer teams and their fans can give us a window into how people can be divided and defined by their allegiances and ideals, and why those with similar views band together to create a familiar environment for themselves.
During the late 80’s, Phil Alden Robinson developed a sensational story that revolved around a real life account of a sport tragedy. The viewers were immersed in a touching account of how sport, a social interest, can play a powerful role in human bonding; thus becoming a very spiritual component of life. It in itself has a profound effect on the societies’ spiritual experiences; and just like religion can respectfully be considered a form of spirituality for a modern society, as exemplified in Robinson’s movie ‘Field of Dreams’. This story resonates far beyond the power of dreams, its appeal lies in a vision of a perfect sport and the love for which can inadvertently resolve issues no matter how grand. The plot at first presents itself as a complex; or maybe even a strange series of events, but somehow its scenes string themselves into a moral about redemption and deep interpersonal bonds.
Charles Prebish draws the conclusion that religion and sport are not just parallel, but they are a complete identity. He comes to this conclusion because he feels that there is more to the religious terminology that other authors suggested. Prebish says that fifty or more terms and phrases can expand the terminology, with little investigation. He also feels that most of the other authors share the vocabulary for both religion and sport, but have different meanings for each. He says in many cases there is no difference in meaning that each term carries for the two traditions. Prebish also gives us an example of two people, an athletic marathoner and the faithful churchgoer. The churchgoer seeks the glorious experience of God, while the marathoner pursues the “perfect run”, which in some cases can be an equally profound and religious experience. Prebish gives more examples of the identical similarities between religion and sport: sacred food, chants, personnel, seasonal rituals, etc. Although Prebish gives these examples of how identical these similarities are, I think the main point in his argument is that he is convinced through his work with athletes that it is possible to experience ultimate reality through sport, and that it happens regularly.
The Web. 31 Mar. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Duncan, Margaret C., and Nicole Williams. "This Revolution Is Not Being Televised" Out of Play: Critical Essays on Gender and Sport. By Michael A. Messner, Ph.D. Albany: State University of New York, 2007.
Religion and Sport Final Essay: Introduction There are certain phenomena common throughout many different social, political and religious denominations – sport is one such phenomenon. By examining the dynamic, and often complex relationship between sport and religion as a whole, one can gain a deeper understanding of various religious values, and use sport as an overarching medium under which the comparison of different religions throughout history becomes possible. Religious studies are generally extremely complex, religions are not easily definably and the same religion may manifest in a number of different ways, depending on historical, geographical, and social context. The study of a single religion in itself is complex, but to simultaneously
The games themselves are public rituals (such as the arenas) enacted according to strict rules and conventions, which forces us to suspend our everyday lives to watch the ritual unfold. Moreover, the ritual increases our experience of belonging to certain groups, heightening our respect for certain institutions, all while strengthening our belief in certain idea. In addition, these clans, institutions, and ideas all transcend us, thus, depicting the Stanley Cup playoffs as a sacred event in Durkheim’s
Dealing with the issue of sport and ethnology, three major factors come to mind; prejudice, racism, and discrimination. These factors span across gender, ethnic, racial, religious, and cultural groups. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss how these factors have played a part in the evolution of sport in our society. The first issue tackled in this paper will be racism in sports, followed by prejudice and discrimination.
Eitzen, D. Stanley. (1999). "Sport Is Fair, Sport Is Foul." Fir and Foul: Beyond the Myths and Paradoxes of Sport.