CHAPTER FOUR
THE SAME GENRE
FOR DIFFERENT AUDIENCES:
A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN
AND BRITISH FOOTBALL MATCH REPORTS
MARCIN LEWANDOWSKI
Introduction
In recent years, football language, the most thoroughly analyzed variety of
sports language, has been investigated as a special language, which –
largely thanks to extensive media coverage – can also be regarded as a
public language (see, e.g., Evangelisti Allori 2005; Taborek 2012; Bergh
and Ohlander 2012; Lewandowski 2013). While many football-specific
terms and idioms are known to a broad segment of the general public, it
would be hard to deny that footballspeak, as football language is
sometimes colloquially referred to, also displays several features of special
languages. It is found in the four major kinds of specialist communication,
as distinguished by Fluck 1991, that is, in: 1) professional activity
(communication during football games, training sessions, briefing sessions,
and workshops), 2) communication for public purposes (media discourses),
3) scientific activity (popular science and scientific publications), and 4)
teaching-oriented or educational activity (e.g., resource materials for
foreign players designed to teach communication skills in the target
language).
Football language can be further subdivided into a number of domains
or fields of communicative activity (Lewandowski 2014), such as the
language of football players and coaches, the language of rules and
regulations, the language of football fans, the language of print, broadcast,
and online media discourses, to list the most common ones. Within these
areas it is possible to identify several registers – varieties of language