The Same Genre for Different Audiences
83Metaphorical
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 2. Distribution of selected terms in the UK and US corpora.
As the figures for the pairs man/player and side/team indicate, it is
difficult to label any of these terms as either Britishisms or Americanisms
par excellence. It would be safe to assume that these words are used in
both UK and US reports; however, regarding the first pair, the British
sportswriters favour man whereas their American colleagues are more
inclined to use player. As for the other pair, team is commonly used across
both sides of the Atlantic. By contrast, side occurs much more frequently
in the UK corpus and is more strongly associated with the British English
usage.
While the overwhelming majority of football terms are shared by
American and British English football languages, their occurrence rates
may vary (sometimes significantly) between the US and UK reports. To
illustrate the nature of this problem, two cognitive linguistic frameworks
will be applied: Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Frame Semantics.
Conceptual metaphors in football reporting have been explored in a
vast amount of research (cf., e.g., Charteris-Black 2004; Nordin 2008;
Vierkant 2008; Lewandowski 2009, 2011, 2012; Bergh 2011; WiliĔski
2014; Thalhammer 2015). Underlying many of these studies is the
conclusion that a soccer game and football competition in general can be
perceived through a wide range of source domains, such as war, theatre,