A Brief Analysis of the Characteristics and the Reasons of Sports English

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1、8Thesis：Being a particular kind of English, sports English have developed its unique characteristics and an analysis of reasons that form theses features is important. Introduction. Lexical featuresA. Initialism and AcronymB. Composition C. AffixationD. ConversionE. CoinageF. Loanword. Sentence Feat

2、ures A. A multiplicity of sentence patterns B. Conciseness and simplicity C. Past tense and present tense D. Mood of the sentence. The reasons of these features A. The characteristics of sport itself B. The features of sports newsC. The development of sports undertakings and cultural exchanges. Conc

3、lusion A Brief Analysis of the Characteristics and the Reasons of Sports English . A brief introductionAs an international language, English has been a hot topic. On the other hand, sport has also been an eternal theme in everyday life, and it is a sign of social civilization. Under a booming develo

4、pment background, sports undertakings are also thriving in China, especially after the total success of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. More and more attention has been paid to sports undertakings nowadays. For the international exchanges are intensifying, hence, an analysis of sports English is nec

5、essary. Lexical featuresIt is easy for us to find that there are many professional sports words. Different sports have their different own words. Some of them are common used. Most of them are only used in one kind of sport. But, where are they from? Are they original English words? The word in spor

6、ts English comes from lots of resources. First, they are initialism and acronym. Many sports words we talk about today are initialism. For example, NBA is for National Basketball Association. IOC is for the International Olympic Committee. Initialism is convenient for writing and remembering. And ma

7、ybe its too boring to tell the whole name of them. People adapt this kind of form little by little and they also use initialism in other English words. So the initialism is widely used in nowadays sports English. Second, its composition such like Record breaker, Team sports, Crossing-country skiing,

8、 Italian Serie A. They are created according to our custom in speaking. Often, when we talk about one thing related to sports, at the same time, we are also aware of the part of it or another sport similar with it. So, at this time, we always create a new word by combination of the original words. T

9、hird, its affixation. When we want to describe some position or some special players in sports, we use these words. They often help us to know the details about this kind of sport. Upheld, Semifinal, Super-heavyweight, substitutes, Parachutist, Goalkeeper, mountaineering are all the examples. You wi

10、ll see that these words express the situation vividly. Forth, conversion will change some situations of the sports English. Forward means go along or advance. But in some ball sports, Forward means a kind of player who move in the front court mainly and responsibility in offense. For example, in foo

11、tball, forward often plays a role of slayer on the court. They are always the best goal achiever in the team and always the big star in the whole sport. Free kick is a noun originally. But in football, it is a verb. Fifth, they are coinage. They are always new sports or man-made part in a traditiona

12、l sport such like Aerobics, Golden goal, Three-peat, Wake boating. These words are all created according to the development of this sport. When the needs become more and more important and often, some body bolt the new description out. The last resource is Loanword. Kung fu, Judo, Tae Kwon doe are a

13、ll not traditional English word. They are all native traditional sports and spread to the western countries by degrees. Thus, English people continue to use these words. Kung fu is from Chinese phonetic alphabet. When Chinese kung fu became known by English people, they havent changed its name so fa

14、r. Sentence FeaturesA. A multiplicity of sentence patterns Different from other kinds of English in certain fields, sports English has its unique sentence features. One of palpable manifestations is various sentence patterns in sports English, which helps to achieve vividness and glamour of sports.

15、The following sentence patterns are frequently used and seen in articles about sports, especially sports news:Firstly, elliptical sentence and imperative sentence are employed continually in headline of sports English, for the headline of sports news calls for clarity and brevity. For example, the h

16、eadline “One for the Liverpool” only contains four words but it expresses itself clearly. In the headline “Williams Charged with Assault”, the copula “be” is left out, which appears regularly in the headline writing. Whats more, imperative sentence usually can be seen in the headlines of comments in

17、 order to grasp readers attention and leave reader in the meditation of one sports incident. For instance, the headline “Take Your Base, Coach Bill” actually refers that coach Bill should have achieved something with his team. Secondly, long declarative sentences often appear in the detail reports a

18、nd articles of sports news. Thus, readers will kwon details about process of the matches clearly through reading these long sentences. Thirdly, in order to contain more information and transport clear information to readers, a large number of attributive clauses, appositive clauses and complex sente

19、nces are added into sports articles. Take this for example. “Swedish veteran Henrik Larsson, who has just joined Barcelona after his countrys Euro 2004 campaign, is also likely to make the trip to China.” If the attributive clause “who has just joined Barcelona after his countrys Euro 2004 campaign”

20、 is omitted, readers have no way to learn that Henrik Larsson has just joined Barcelona. More information carried by these sentence patterns make reader largely informed.B. Conciseness and simplicity The timeliness of the sports competitions demands that sentences in sports reports and other article

21、s be concise and simple. During the competition, everything happens quickly and every occasion changes in a swift rhythm. The short, concise and simple sentences reflect the tense ambience, quick rhythm and changeable situation of competitions. Even one or two words can be a sentence like “Bad”, “Ag

22、ain”, “Side out”.Usually in basketball game, “touch!” is regularly heard rather than “you have touched the ball”, although the latter is grammatically right. In the sentence “France will still up at the end of the first half”, the very short preposition “up” express the meaning that France will stil

23、l keep ahead. More examples are “Pass! I am open now” instead of “Nobody is stopping (or defending) me now, “you served out of turn”, and “you are rough play, send you off”. The short sentences convey as clear meanings as long sentences. It is certain that competitors, referees, and coaches prefer t

24、o use short, simple sentences.C. Past tense and present tense As a usual, based on the characteristics of the sports reports, past tense and present tense are the most frequently used tenses. Present tense usually is employed in commentary. The sports interpreters interpret what they are watching an

25、d what is happening in scene of competitions. Thus, present tense is their first alternative. Commentaries like “final seconds Pierce puts it up, for the winKnocks it down!” and off the dribble from the perimeterIlgauskas goes to the floor, at seven-foot-three (73) and eleven years in the leagueLebr

26、on down the lane, Oh” all use present tense. However, past tense is seen on newspaper, for the news on the newspaper happened in the past. It is also more objective and conventional to use past tense on the sports newspaper. For example, Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker were terrific for th

27、ree quarters, then good enough at the end to carry San Antonio to a 108100 victory over the upstart Utah Jazz on Sunday (Harvey Araton: Terrific for Three Quarters, Spurns Won). The whole paragraph use past tense to describe how Spurns won the game.D. Mood of the sentence The readers subject of the

28、sports news, reports and articles is not only professionals, sports fans, but also a mass of nonprofessional readers. Therefore, introductive and declarative mood is not unfamiliar. Take this paragraph for example: “Weight lifting is an Olympic sport consisting of two lifts: the snatch and the clean

29、 and jerk. Each competitor is allowed three attempts in each lift. The sum of the lifters best snatch and best clean and jerk is the lifters total.”(William C. Rhoden: Weight Lifting). This mood of this paragraph is introductive and declarative, whose purpose is to introduce the weight lifting to re

30、aders.There also exists such a situation that for the sake of enhancing tense atmosphere before the competitions, reporters use words and sentences with highly adversarial color to create this kind of ambience. . The reasons of these featuresSport is fierce, competitive and often refers to a series

31、of continuous actions. Therefore, concise words may well embody such features. As the example given before, in Initialism, NBA is for National Basketball Association and IOC is for the International Olympic Committee. Compared to the original expression, this is time-saving, space-saving and direct,

32、 but the basis is that the speakers have the same or nearly the same knowledge background. Actually some common Initialisms have been widely used not only in peoples daily conversations but also in formal documents and conferences. (Wikipedia: Acronym and Initialism)All are expected to participate i

33、n sports activities. People from different walks of life bear different language style. At first, two kinds of styles may seem incompatible, but as more and more people using them, they both become individual, acceptable and co-existing styles. Sports news is a rich resource in analyzing the charact

34、eristics of sports English. In fact, the analysis of sentence features is mostly based on actual sports news. News publications are means for mass media. Varies levels of readers should all be taken into consideration. Popularity is one of its striking features. Moreover, economy is an important met

35、hod to achieve conciseness. Besides, it is also out of the actual profit. The profits from the advertisements are so high that the layout becomes quite precious. To report as much information in a limited space, all kinds of methods are applied to achieve refined use of words and sentences, which in

36、 turn, emphasizes the significance of conciseness. (Wikipedia: Mass Media)As to grammar, firstly, sports news also has perceivable features. To create a sense that something is right in its progress present tense is frequently used, which builds naturalness and authenticity. Secondly, extended simpl

37、e sentences are preferred. This is because of the limited space. Bu on the other hand, in this way, the structure becomes more rigorous and compact. Common methods to extend simple sentences are to use apposition, preposition phrases, and participles. Besides, in many cases, many pre-modifiers are u

38、sed to substitute for subordinate clauses. Sport is an international activity. In modern times, almost every day there are international sports events held somewhere in the world. At the very moment, the FIFA World Cup is being held in South Africa. A vague estimate indicates that over 20 different

39、languages are spoken among the 32 qualified national teams. From this perspective, the simple word “football” can be interpreted into a lot more ways. In English, there are at least two ways to express “football”. And based on this theory, other sports events may also be expressed in more than one w

40、ay, in which coinage and loanword are born. For example, Tae Kwon Doe is from Korean, and Kung Fu is from Chinese. (Wikipedia: Loanword)More often than not, a new sport event will be introduced from one country to a new land where nobody ever knows the new game, let alone giving name to it. Therefor

41、e, in an easy way people just borrow the sound from the original language and then make out a new word based on its own language phonetic principles, despite that the two languages may belong to different families. As the development of sports undertakings is booming prosperously, the globalization

42、of sport is accelerating, which leads to the unique words and expressions of sport English. . ConclusionThe factors affecting the unique characteristics of sports English are about both the language itself and the culture exchanges. As it has been proved that the ability English borrows words from o

43、ther languages is quite strong, there is still the tendency for English to further apply coinage and loanword methods to enlarge its sports vocabulary. On the other hand, the cultural exchanges are still moving on. Therefore, there could probably be more special features belonging to sports English

44、that are to emerge in the future. But no matter how it evolves, or rather changes, sports English will remain an inseparable feast in peoples daily life. Works CitedAraton, Harvey. Terrific for Three Quarters, Spurns Won. June 30, 2010 Rhoden, William C. Weight Lifting. June 30, 2010Wikipedia. Acronym and Initialism. June 25, 2010Wikipedia. Mass Media. June 25, 2010Wikipedia. Loanword. June 26, 2010