Chapter Four
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art, magic, journey, other sports (boxing, horseracing, track and field
athletics, sailing and chess), and even food. The most salient conceptual
metaphors in football reporting are: A FOOTBALL MATCH IS WAR, A
FOOTBALL MATCH IS A THEATER PERFORMANCE, A
FOOTBALL MATCH IS A BOXING BOUT, FOOTBALL
COMPETITION IS A JOURNEY/VOYAGE, and AN OUTSTANDING
FOOTBALL PERFORMANCE IS A WORK OF ART.
Metaphorical
expression Explanation UK US
ammunition the team’s attacking potential 2 0
assault, charge, foray,
onslaught
attack 4 3battle, war highly competitive game 2 2
battlefield pitch, field 1 0
bombardment, siege constant attacking 3 0
called into action forced to make a save (of a
goalkeeper)
0 1campaign tournament, competition 4 4
clash game, match 10 0
conquer defeat 1 0
duel game, match; also fight for the ball,
e.g. aerial duel
2 0ranks, soldiers, battlers players 4 0
rearguard defense (as a formation) 2 0
veteran experienced player 1 4
warrior combative player 0 1
TOTAL 36 15
Table 3. Linguistic metaphors from the WAR domain in the UK and
US corpora.
All of the aforementioned conceptual metaphors and several others
structure the discourses of the UK and US football match reports
investigated in the present study. However, these metaphors are more
frequently invoked and are more elaborated in the British FMRs. A good
illustration of this finding is the data in Table 3, which lists linguistic
metaphors underlying the most pervasive conceptual metaphor A
FOOTBALL MATCH IS WAR. These metaphorical expressions^5 have
(^5) The metaphorical expressions (linguistic metaphors) were identified in line with
the Metaphor Identification Procedure, as proposed by the Pragglejaz Group
(2007: 3).