Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

Chapter Four
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in soccer games). Tables 4 and 5 present lexical units (only nouns)
associated with these frames, and the number of their occurrences in both
corpora.

Metaphorical
expression Explanation UK US
ammunition the team’s attacking potential 2 0
assault, charge, foray,
onslaught

attack 4 3

battle, 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 1

campaign 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 0

ranks, 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 4. Lexical units in the PASS frame in the UK and US corpora.

Lexical unit UK US
shot 120 141
strike 15 17
TOTAL FOR THE HYPERNYMS 135 158
bicycle kick 0 1
chip 3 0
drive 9 3
finish 15 8
half-volley 3 1
header 63 45
volley 16 3
TOTAL FOR THE HYPONYMS 77 63

Table 5. Lexical units in the SHOT frame in the UK and US corpora.