Language of Sports

Från D-uppsats i engelsk lingvistik, Umeå universitet, 1999

Preface

Ces´t la Vie, said the old folks

It goes to show you never can tell

Chuck Berry

To some extent the English language and boxing have been my, almost daily, companions for many years. They are by no means opposite entities, but rather complimentary factors in a world where items and thoughts overlap each other, more or less in the same fashion as man and language co-operate to conceptualize life around us. The cognitive paradigm of linguistics allows us to see the links between the real world and language, instead of trying to isolate a communicative system and leaving man and the real world in no man’s land. The English language is perhaps the richest language of all and therefore also most apt to be the link between the individual human being and everyday life in a modern global world.

Samuel Johnson listed 43 000 English words in his 18^th century dictionary, while the 1989 version of the Oxford English Dictionary contained 615 000 entries (cf. Bryson, 1990:139). The latter figure is of course only a fraction of the real language and what is necessary to cover every action and every situation in life. In my essay, I have, humbly, concentrated on the language of boxing, as a tool to discuss some ideas in cognitive linguistics.

To concentrate on a certain area of the lexis, also seems a suitable idea since I have, as a foreign learner of English, realised a long time ago that English is almost like a game of dart, very easy to hit the board, but extremely difficult to hit the bull’s eye.

Before the essay proper there is, however, space for a story with a moral to it.

John McCormack, born in Dublin, British professional light heavyweight champion in 1967 once told me a story to illustrate the necessity of being aware of the fact that a category may be polycentric or at least bicentric and could very well refer to two entirely different cognitive concepts.

In the beginning of his career John McCormack (MC1) was nicknamed "Young" McCormack since there was another John McCormack (MC2) also active in the same period. (MC2) was a Scotsman and nicknamed "Cowboy" since he had lived in the United States for some time.

In 1964 the two of them were to box each other in the Royal Albert Hall in London. The posters said something like: "Will the real (MC) step forward, please?" That pragmatic expression is, however not entirely beside the point of the story. Irish John won the contest, stopped Cowboy John in four rounds.

After the contest Irish John took a long shower, to really soak his bruised muscles. Finally he was alone his dressing room. Much to his surprise, (MC2’s) father turned up in the dressing room with a case of beer. He wanted to congratulate (MC1) to the victory. (MC1) did neither smoke nor drink, but to be polite he took two bottles out of the case, but declined the rest of the case.

The father of (MC2) left the dressing room and (MC1) was once again alone, and continued his extensive shower. He held a bottle of beer in each hand and took mouthful of beer, but otherwise just let the bottles fill with water.

Then suddenly a completely strange woman appeared in the dressing room. It turned out to be the wife of (MC2) who probably had gone to the wrong dressing room. The whole situation was very embarrassing for (MC1). He was after all an Irish catholic in the still not so liberated mid 60’ s. Instinctively he tried to cover his private parts with the only things he could get hold of, the two beer bottles. He could not just drop the bottles since they could be crushed against the floor.

But mrs (MC2) was not to be intimidated.

Never mind, she said, if you have seen one (MC) you have seen them all

7. Conclusion

In this essay I have attempted to show how boxing jargon has affected everyday language and discuss this matter from a general congnitivistic standpoint. However, I have also tried to use other perspectives, since man has shown an interest in language and boxing in one form or another since ancient times. I have used a cognitive approach since it is hardly possible to write about these matters without taking extra linguistic knowledge into account. It is also a fundamental cognitivist notion that the real world and the linguistic system interacts in how man perceives the world. The sources I have used have been of various kinds: dictionaries, linguistic books and general material.

John Taylor’s book Linguistic Categorization and An Introduction to Cognitive Linguistics by Ungerer & Schmid were particularly useful when the cogntivist approach was discussed, while Nat Fleischer’s Ring Record Book was the basis for the discussion on specific boxing jargon. In the discussion some emphasis was put on the fact that a number of these terms and expressions have crept into everyday language, and are often used in a metaphoric sense.

Within the framework of the experimental view I have provided a survey of the basic concepts of metaphors in language. The structural conceptual metaphor +life is boxing+, as introduced by Lakoff and Johnson, was also presented.

The attentional view offered a possibility to show why certain aspects of boxing jargon have crept into everyday language, while others have been left out.

I have also discussed some contrastive aspects between English and my own mother tongue, Swedish, to show why there are differences in the use of boxing jargon in the standard language of the two languages. 

To sum up:

1) Sports jargon in general, and boxing jargon in particular, has moved into everyday life and language most likely because of the immense popularity sport has enjoyed in our century.

2) The reason why certain lexical items or expressions from boxing jargon is transferred into everyday language is man’s fundamental ability to highlight what is important and necessary among the real world stimuli.

3) The fact that there are more examples of boxing jargon in English everyday language than in Swedish, is likely to reflect the cultural differences between the two countries.

Ett par utdrag: förord och sammanfattning ur en D-uppsats i engelsk lingvistik, Umeå universitet, 1999

Roger Söderberg