Shaping perception and evaluation of sports events in the English-language sports discourse through conceptual metaphors

Abstract

The research aims to identify the features of metaphorical conceptualization in the English-language sports discourse. The paper investigates the systematicity of conceptual metaphors and their capacity to create new and complex meanings in various contexts. Metaphors in the English-language sports discourse are examined taking into account three aspects: the common meaning of a metaphor, the initial metaphoric transfer, as well as the transfer created in the context of a wide range of unseen implications. The novelty of the research lies in describing the functioning of conceptual metaphors in the English-language sports discourse based on the football articles that cover the participation of the Icelandic national football team in Euro 2016. Special attention is paid to conventional metaphors that acquire new meanings and implications depending on the context and metaphors that express participation in a tournament as a journey (verbalization of the general ‘A tournament is a journey’ metaphor). These specific subcategories of metaphors help describe and evaluate sports actions, events and situations. The research findings show that metaphors highlight various aspects of sports events and characterize their participants, which influences the perception of sports discourse recipients.