The Same Genre for Different Audiences
91Such additional information is also provided by relative clauses.- Neymar, 22, who plays for Barcelona, has had his face plastered on
billboards and shown in television commercials since well before the
tournament. (NYT)
In the US corpus there are many other examples of appositive noun
phrases: Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta, Germany goalkeeper
Manuel Neuer, defender Giorgio Chiellini or Joe Hart, the English
goalkeeper. The modifiers describe players of international renown, who
in theory should be well known to football fans around the globe.
However, the American sportswriters feel the need to introduce them,
which in some cases may contribute to information overload (at least from
a football fan’s perspective, some of these facts are obvious and
redundant). Given that example 14 comes from a report of the game
between Juventus and Barcelona, it seems that too much information is
overtly encoded on the surface structure.
Elaboration is also employed in the US reports to explain some
football terms that may appear elusive to American readers. Hence, the
football writers provide additional explanation or resort to metalanguage
(in example 19) to make these concepts more accessible to their audience
(the terms have been boldfaced, their elaborations are underscored).
- With coach Joachim Loew preferring to play with a "false nine" system
without a striker, Klose sat out Germany's opening 4-0 rout of Portugal.
(USA) - Some will be quick to say that this result should spell the end of the so-
called tiki-taka, or stylish passing style made famous by Guardiola’s
Barcelona teams. (NYT)
19.Parking the bus is a term used to describe teams defending in numbers,
and Chelsea did plenty of that. (USA)
Note that in the case of the first two terms, their singularity is
additionally signalled by quotation marks and the adjective so-called. Both
football phrases sound perfectly natural to a British football fan (likewise
the term park the bus), with their meanings assumed known. For this
reason, there is no need to explain them.
- Arsene Wenger, presumably confused at having hit his head so many times
on the glass ceiling that prevents Arsenal from winning trophies, had the
temerity to claim their style in picking Cesc Fabregas as a false No9 rather
than an out-and-out forward “betrayed their philosophy and turned it into
something more negative”. (EXP)