Sport language
Sport language describes the verbal form of communication with which understanding takes place within the subject area of sport or with which the phenomenon of sport is reflected upon. It encompasses the language used by active athletes , sports spectators, sports instructors, sports reporters and sports scientists . Different language levels can be distinguished.
Term classification
The language of sport, like the language of students , the language of soldiers , the language of the hunter , the language of the seafarer , the language of the law firm , the language of the hoodlum , the language of the aviator or the language of the lawyers, is one of the special languages . As with these, a range developed from gibberish to technical language to cultivated standard German .
The language of sport presents itself accordingly today on three linguistic levels as the " sport jargon " of the simple scene milieu, as the " technical language " of the demanding professional area and sport science and as a metaphor for the " standard language ". The transitions are often fluid.
Language origin
Ancient origin
The language of sport has many fathers. It developed in the respective cultural environment from which the physical activities arose. This is how the first terms, which are still in use today, such as athlete (= competitor), gymnastics (= nude art), amateur (= lover), motor skills (= movement art / musculoskeletal system) or agonal principle (= competition principle ), originated as early as in Greco-Roman antiquity or . derived from their language creations. The original meaning of the technical term " sport " goes back to the late Latin d (e) isportare = to disperse. It encompassed all forms of entertaining amusement before it experienced a conceptual narrowing down to a body-related conceptual understanding that pays homage to the idea of competition and performance with the English sport movement.
German origin
However, the linguistic innovator Friedrich Ludwig Jahn , who became known as the father of gymnastics , is considered the real pioneer of the German language . While the philanthropists such as Basedow or GutsMuths had adopted the Greek term “gymnastics” for the new area of physical education, Jahn created a vocabulary with his “German gymnastics” that focused on German-language terms. In his pamphlet “Deutsches Volksthum” he vehemently opposed the “corruption” of the German language and gave the development of language significant impulses with creative word-finding. Many of his terms have survived to this day, especially in gymnastics language and in scientific terminology. Jahn invented the term gymnastics , which he derived from the European-medieval term " tournament " , for his outdoor physical education activities, which still included all fields of activity including games, swimming and hiking . Subsequent terms such as gymnastics movement , gymnastics language, gymnastics instructor, gymnasium, gymnastics equipment, gym shoes or gym shorts emerged from the basic term . Jahn invented devices that he knew by name, and which at the time of turn ban should play a greater role and physical education in the underground as stretching , bars , pommel horse , rings , uneven bars , balance beam , Bock , box , horse , vault or concentricity , a carousel-like gymnastics device. The forms of movement were also given German names. They were called swinging, tilting, rim, caulking, rolling, rollover or jumping movements. The position to the device is referred to as "back left" or "front left", the direction of movement as "forwards", "sideways" or "backwards". The nomenclature of the gymnast's language created by Jahn has been preserved primarily in today's apparatus and artistic gymnastics , but also in neighboring sports such as diving or trampoline jumping .
Anglo-American origin
The sport language then experienced a strong expansion through foreign language acquisitions, especially from the Anglo-American region. Terms like “ foul ” (English “bad”) for irregular behavior, counterattack for a counter-attack after an unsuccessful enemy attack or slip for a side gliding flight while gliding enriched the vocabulary of the German sport language as foreign or loan words. Strongly interspersed with Anglicisms, there are mainly sports disciplines that became increasingly popular from Anglo-American countries after 1945. In addition to the traditional German “gymnastics”, “ fistball ” or “ basketball ”, sport games such as “ volleyball ” or “ basketball ” established themselves and brought their English technical terms into the German sporting language, which is becoming increasingly popular with the emergence of new and popular sports like that "Paragliding" and " soaring " continue with " aggressive skating ", "river rafting" , " base jumping " or " balconing " .
Anglicisms as linguistic adoptions from the English language were not always accepted by scientific terminology, even after Jahn. Up until the 1980s, educators preferred German-language technical and occupational names such as “gymnastics / gymnastics teacher”, “physical education / physical education” or “physical education / physical education”. German vocabulary also prevailed in football , such as "goal" instead of "goal", "player" instead of "kicker", "goalkeeper" instead of "Kieper", "team" instead of "team", " penalty " instead of "penalty" or "fighting game" instead of "match".
In the course of the global sports movement and the international spread of sports and competitions, however, foreign words or synonyms are today largely tolerated.
Language levels
There is no uniform sports language. Rather, the sport language differs on the one hand according to the area of application of the social milieu and the corresponding language level and on the other hand according to the different sports from which it has grown and continues to grow as a living language, as Patrick Rutishauser has worked out using the example of "basketball": Depending on the language audience ( Fan base, live journalism, specialist audience or sports science) a highly differentiated vocabulary has developed.
Sports jargon
The sports theorist Harald Dankert established in 1969 that a distinction must be made between jargon and technical language. The sports jargon is its own language area that usually especially the scene-language and the language of the enthusiastic live report dominated the enthusiasm ignite and will be carried away. It is the lowest level of language from which the vocabulary of living language originally emerged. This is characterized as particularly pictorial and often contains onomatopoeic elements as well as drastic pictorial creations and comparisons. Expressions such as “ cucumber ”, “ pöhlen ” or “ flerzen ” create a non-intellectual, emotionally carried communication atmosphere that unconsciously constitutes a scene awareness of the initiated and more or less deliberately sets itself apart from the high-level language, which is perceived as stilted.
Special expressions such as “ Lepo ” (read backwards from “Opel”) for the retrieval vehicle in gliding sport characterize the playful, linguistic character that explains many slang words. From the jargon of the athletes, numerous terms and expressions have flowed into the colloquial language, which are able to shape them graphically, to charge them emotionally, to keep them alive, to accentuate and thus enrich them. Examples include the “ calf bite ”, who has proven to be a particularly stubborn defender of his cause, or the “ stabber ” who draws an easy (goal) success from the preparatory work of his teammates.
Jargon
The technical language or technical terminology is characterized by its unmistakable, precise expression. It moves on a high language level and is largely only accessible to experts. This is particularly evident when, for example - as in aviation communication - time-saving abbreviations and codes are used such as QNH for determining altitude, VFR for visual flight operations or UL for a type of microlight aircraft. The technical terms of the soccer game such as " flank ", " pass " or " overhead kick " have largely reached the general understanding due to the popularity of the sport game.
High-level language
The term “sport” has not only reached the technical level, but also the high-level linguistic level. The standard language speaks of mental exercise , memory sport , of " sporty clothing " or of a "sporty car", of "sporty behavior" or of "sporty atmosphere". Depending on the context, she wants to identify the casual or particularly fair manners that are usual in the sports sector. Expressions such as “counter” or “pinch” have also become common language.
Sports disciplines
In addition to numerous sporting terms used across all sports, such as " fairness " (= ethical and moral high-quality human interaction) or " hat trick " (= achieving three successes in a row), each sports area also develops its own extensive vocabulary with which communication is practiced:
The figure skaters speak of pirouettes and call their jumps " Rittberger ", " Toeloop ", " Axel " or " Salchow ".
The aviation athletes use technical terms such as " deep stall ", " chandelle ", " spinning ", " rolling ", " slipping " or " looping ".
The gymnasts use expressions such as " Flickflack ", " Kippe ", " Kreishocke ", " Schwungstemme " or " Gienger-Salto " tocommunicate.
"Flickflack" in floor exercise
The athletes deal with " interval training ", use " spikes " and " sprint " on " tartan tracks ".
The diver know the " Auerbach Salto ", the " Screw Salto " and the " Dolphin Jump ".
Language features
The language of sport is generally characterized as a pictorial language of high clarity and expressiveness. The emotionally charged, often drastic vocabulary of the fan base and the diction of live journalism, which is often kept in superlative style, are refined on the technical level without losing any of its expressive intensity.
If enthusiastic reporters “ gallop ” each other when reporting on a tense sporting event and players sometimes with pleonasms and “picture salad” in their expression, the scientific language finds a mature terminology that also allows well-founded, differentiated analyzes. The general acceptance is particularly evident in the imagery and the adoption of numerous expressions from sports language into the standard language.
imagery
The sports language origin is often no longer aware of when expressions such as “take off”, “be a high-flyer”, “take off”, “sit firmly in the saddle”, “play for a while”, “get sidelined” or “yourself to give a nakedness ”, “ to speak in high fashion ”, “ to surpass someone ” or a technical term such as “ agonal principle ”has also found its way into the vocabulary of business life.
War vocabulary
Sports journalism prefers war vocabulary when it comes to the heat of the moment in a tense sports game. An article in DIE WELT by Hendrik Werner on November 30th, 2009 even tried exaggeratedly to equate the language of sport with the language of war. Borrowings from war vocabulary with linguistic exaggerations such as “Defensive battle of VfL”, “Massacre of Madrid” or “Bomber of the Nation” seem to confirm this assessment. Before and in some stadiums, "replacement wars" are waged, some reports are handled in the style of a "classic field battle" : the football fans become "battle strollers", the team becomes a "troop" that follows a "tactical route" to avoid the "opposing one." roll up defensive front or to overrun " one " shoots ", " bombing, " " fires grenades ".
As much as such a vocabulary apparently permeates the language used in fighting games, it remains at the lowest level of the language of fans and journalists. This makes it all the more necessary for Germanists and sports educators such as Siegbert Warwitz and Walter Haubrich to critically evaluate and differentiate between the various language levels.
Importance and teaching mediation
Anyone who wants to gain a foothold in a certain sports scene and have a say must acquire the relevant vocabulary. The use of sports language distinguishes insiders and outsiders. This applies both to the field of simple street sports as well as to professional sports and science. Most of the time, the path leads through gradually growing into one another in a sporting manner. A terminology seminar or dealing with a specialist lexicon offers reliable access to the acquisition of the demanding nomenclature in the scientific field. The Germanist Siegbert A. Warwitz provides examples and structural analyzes for the didactic development of sports metaphors, the journalist Walter Haubrich linguistic material for classroom processing .
literature
- K. Arnold, J. Leirich: apparatus gymnastics - terminology . Lochner-Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3928026240
- Werner Boschmann: Lexicon of the Ruhr area language from Aalskuhle to Zymtzicke. With the highlights of German literature - in pure Ruhr German. Verlag Henselowsky Boschmann, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-922750-01-X
- Armin Burkhardt: Dictionary of Football Language. Publishing house Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2006
- Harald Dankert: Sport Language and Communication , Tübingen 1969
- Till-Bastian Fehringer: The 'own laws' of sports language and sports reporting - a media analysis using the example of a newspaper , Kindle, Marburg 2007, ISBN 9783638669337
- Walter Haubrich: The visual language of sport in contemporary German . Schorndorf 1965
- Pavol Maronek: The Sport Language in German - Football Language , [Brno 2008] (Bachelor thesis , Masaryk University in Brno, Philosophical Faculty, Institute for German, Nordic and Dutch Studies, 2008 full text online PDF, free of charge, 33 pages, 237 kB).
- Radosław Maziarz: The metaphors in football commentary. Wydawnictwo IKR [i] BL, Siedlce 2016, ISBN 978-83-64884-01-6 (dissertation University of Rzeszów 2010 188 pages).
- Dieter Möhn: Specialized and group languages. In: Lothar Hoffmann (Ed.): Technical languages. An international handbook on technical language research and terminology science , De Gruyter, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-11-011101-2 , pp. 168–181.
- Peter Röthig, Robert Prohl (Eds.): Sportwissenschaftliches Lexikon , 7th edition, Hofmann, Schorndorf 2003
- Patrick Rutishauser: Sports language through the ages - development tendencies using the example of the magazine "Basketball" , Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-8428-4390-5
- P. Schneider: The language of sport. Terminology and presentation in mass media , Düsseldorf 1974
- Siegbert A. Warwitz: Sport in the mirror of language - a metaphor analysis , Tübingen 1967
- Siegbert A. Warwitz: Das Metaphernlexikon , In: Ders .: Interdisciplinary sports education. Didactic perspectives and model examples of interdisciplinary teaching , Verlag Karl Hofmann, Schorndorf 1974, pages 69–81, ISBN 3-778-04551-2
- Peter Wippermann (Ed.): Duden. Dictionary of scene languages. Trend office. Duden, Mannheim et al. 2000, ISBN 3-411-70951-0
Single receipts
- ↑ Bintz: The gymnastics of the Hellenes . Gutersloh 1877
- ^ Friedrich Ludwig Jahn: German Volksthum . Publishing house Niemann, Lübeck 1810
- ↑ Erwin Mehl: Jahn as a language teacher. For the 200th birthday of the gymnastics father. Mother tongue association, Klosterneuburg-Weidling 1978
- ^ K. Arnold, J. Leirich: apparatus gymnastics - terminology . Lochner-Verlag, 2005
- ^ Peter Röthig, Robert Prohl (ed.): Sportwissenschaftliches Lexikon , 7th edition, Verlag Hofmann, Schorndorf 2003
- ↑ Broder Carstensen, Ulrich Busse: Anglicisms Dictionary: The Influence of English on German Vocabulary after 1945 . Walter de Gruyter publishing house, Berlin and New York 2001
- ↑ Patrick Rutishauser: Sports language in the course of time - development tendencies using the example of the magazine "Basketball" , Diplomica Verlag, Hamburg 2014
- ↑ P. Schneider: The language of sport. Terminology and presentation in the mass media , Düsseldorf 1974
- ↑ Harald Dankert: Sportsprach und Kommunikation , Tübingen 1969
- ↑ Dieter Möhn: Specialized languages and group languages. In: Lothar Hoffmann (Ed.): Technical languages. An international handbook on technical language research and terminology studies , De Gruyter, Berlin 1998
- ^ A b Siegbert A. Warwitz: Sport in the mirror of language - a metaphor analysis , Tübingen 1967
- ↑ a b c Walter Haubrich: The visual language of sport in contemporary German . Schorndorf 1965
- ^ Werner Boschmann: Lexicon of the Ruhr area language from Aalskuhle to Zymtzicke. With the highlights of German literature - in pure Ruhr German. Publishing house Henselowsky Boschmann, Essen 1993
- ^ Till-Bastian Fehringer: The 'own laws' of sports language and sports reporting - a media analysis based on the example of a newspaper , Kindle, Marburg 2007
- ^ Peter Röthig, Robert Prohl (ed.): Sportwissenschaftliches Lexikon , 7th edition, Verlag Hofmann Schorndorf 2003
- ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz: Das Metaphernlexikon , In: Ders .: Interdisciplinary Sports Education. Didactic perspectives and model examples of interdisciplinary teaching , Verlag Karl Hofmann, Schorndorf 1974, pages 69-81.
- ↑ Why the language of sport is a language of war - article from DIE WELT from November 30, 2009
- ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: Die Metaphorik des Kriegsspiel , In: Dies .: Vom Sinn des Spielens. Reflections and game ideas , 4th updated edition, Schneider, Baltmannsweiler 2016, pages 126–136.
- ^ Peter Röthig, Robert Prohl (ed.): Sportwissenschaftliches Lexikon , 7th edition, Verlag Hofmann Schorndorf 2003
- ^ K. Arnold, J. Leirich: apparatus gymnastics - terminology . Lochner-Verlag, 2005
- ^ Armin Burkhardt: Dictionary of Football Language. Publishing house Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2006