Words 2488

Student no. 0518958

Assignment:

Language of Sports journalism discourse : A comparison of articles in Golf and Skiing

magazines
Genre means any frequently occurring, culturally embedded, social process which
involves language (Thornbury 2005). The notion of genre can be further divided up
into a bipartite structure. One that recognises the macro genre and the level below
this; sub genre. The macro genre, can ‘more appropriately be regarded as genre
’colonies’’ (Bhatia 2004:57) which, according to Bhatia, have significant overlap with
other colonies (Bhatia 2004). The level below this can be identified as sub genres
and can help to relate these subcategories to features of context (Bhatia 2004). This
paper will look at the macro genre of sports genre, and the sub genre of sports gear
advice and information within the context of a sports specific magazine. In this case,
Golf and Skiing. The genre of sport uses a great deal of technical language (Beard
1998) and without context knowledge, the meaning of a text is difficult, if not
impossible, to unpack.(Thornbury 2005) The genre of sports writing contains a range
of linguistic features and use of specialist language in order to convey information
about it.

The aim of this essay is firstly to understand to what extent the language of sport
makes use of exclusive language, comparing to completely different sports to assist
this. Secondly this essay will compare and contrast two similar registers within the
language of sports , equipment advice, looking at lexical items and sentence
structures, for the purpose of ascertaining to what extent the language of sport is
pervasive across the board. Beard (1998) says that sport is intertwined with the
processes of society, therefore this essay will investigate to what extent is there
overlap to advertising discourse? To what extent is text made understandable to an
outside reader?

What can be considered the language of sports in terms of its structures and
idiosyncrasies? The language of a particular genre must be functional for its needs.
For example, language of road signs must be clear and brief. The language of sport
must make use of descriptive language that represents the fact that sport is a
physical activity, making use of technical lexemes to do with equipment and
techniques, and a light-hearted escape from reality, therefore entertainment. Both
aspects contribute to a vocabulary influenced by advertisements, journalistic and
sport markets (Zummo 2008).

Golf World

This is a sports magazine aimed at golfing enthusiasts and people who actually play
golf. As a magazine it has fairly rigid editorial guidelines which determine the
features that the magazine contains, and can be broken down into categories such
as , interviews, opinions, equipment and tips on the actual playing of golf (Golf World
05/2010: issue5,vol51). The magazine has a range of communicative purposes.
Most generally is an entertaining yet informative look at the golfing scene, and more
specifically imparts knowledge and advice on golf etcetera. The relationship
between the roles within this social situation are also important, the producer and the
consumer. The analysis of an article on equipment in the Golf World magazine
highlights the crossover that takes place between promotional and informational
genres . At first glance the article appears to be purely advice on golfing equipment
, the subtitle to the headline being ‘Your sticks might be more outdated than you
know’ (Golf World 05/2010: issue5,vol51). However a more comprehensive overview
of the context reveals that the article is bordered by pictures of 6 golf clubs, their
branding and prices, with a light review accompanying them. This highlights the fact
that although the article may indeed be informative on first impressions, its primary
goal is in fact to persuade you to buy new golf clubs, and to promote the product of
respective companies for commercial profit. This gives some value to the notion that
all sport is ‘tied in with the complex systems of human behaviour that we call
‘society’’ (Beard 1998)

At the micro level, the text has a relatively low lexical density and positions it quite
closely to conversational language. This informality is a well established technique of
advertising (Cook 2001) which is interesting because as aforementioned, the article
at first glance is not an advertisement. The lexical density of the text increases
towards the middle of the article, with significant use of pre and post head noun
phrase modifiers, which ultimately is helping the article to persuade you that
purchasing a new golf club is a good and worthwhile investment. The beginning of
the article seems to want to appear more accessible and gain the attention of the
reader, and it does this by presenting an easy to read, low lexical density load on the
reader. The middle of the article does seem to be where a lot more persuasion takes
place.

The middle of the article is characterised by quotations from industry experts ‘

manager of club design’ ’club engineer’ ’president of research and design’ (Golf
World 05/2010: issue5,vol51) This gives the argument that you should purchase new
golfing equipment more credibility and human involvement. These quotations are
much more lexically dense in comparison to the rest of the article, and this is as a
result of the need to pack large amounts of technical information about new golfing
technology into the article. This technological ‘proof’ provides the justification to the
reader for buying new equipment, and is part of the persuasion of a particular
viewpoint synonymous with advertising (Cook 2001).

The beginning of the article sets the argument out, using adjective/noun such as
‘hard purchase’ ‘most expensive thing’. This immediately acknowledges possibly the
most prohibitive reason for not buying this equipment . Longer constructions such as
‘technology hasn’t changed’ ‘benefits aren’t always immediately apparent’ ‘not as
seductive as’. Again this is acknowledging more prohibitive reasons for not buying
the equipment; that there is really no need to purchase it. However the rest of the
article is dedicated to contradicting these notions and uses much more positive
constructions ‘The ability’ ‘improved’ ‘advanced computer simulations’ ‘increase
forgiveness’ ‘more affordable’. The use of comparative adjectives features heavily to
reinforce the argument ‘stronger’ ‘faster’ ‘better’ ‘larger’ ‘deeper’ , this represents the
new technology as superior to what the audience may have and may persuade them
to purchase the equipment.

Paragraphs 1 simply sets out what the rest of the article is going to contradict.
Paragraphs 2 through to 5 are dedicated to the promotion of new technology. So
although at first glance, this may have been presented like an informational, advice
giving article, the majority of it much more closely aligned with the discourse of
advertising.

This article may also suggest an ideological stance, as each new piece of technology
being explained is introduced by a highly ranked person from a well known company,
as if they personally invented the new technology, as opposed to whole teams of
people collectively helping to create the product. Not only is this relying on the
cultural knowledge of the audience (Cook 2001) the ideological stance of a
handcrafted highly technological product helps the article convey a persuasive
message.
The use of jargon in this article is apparent however not particularly excluding ‘iron’
‘driver’ ‘trajectory’ ‘turf’ ‘tee’ ‘CG’. There is indeed some crossover with mainstream
words however the only use of jargon that is apparent throughout the whole piece is
‘iron’. Although you would need to be a golfer to understand this, the text is still
comprehensible to a reader not yet a member of this discourse community. The Golf
World article is very persuasion and opinion oriented, the effect of this is
personalizing and makes the discourse more accessible to less advanced readers
(Dillion 1992) which counterbalances the effect of highly technical language and
enables the article to affect as wide a consumer base as possible.

Ski & Snowboard

This is a sports magazine aimed at people who partake in the extreme winter sports
of Skiing and Snowboarding. It is important to note that most of the magazine is
dedicated to Skiing, presumably because skiing has been an established sport for far
longer. Similarly to Golf World, it is a magazine and therefore has rigid editorial
guideline and this can be seen in the similarity between the categories in Golf World
‘features’ ‘skills’ ‘news and views’ (Daily Mail Ski & Snowboard March/April 2010).
The magazine also has a range of communicative purposes but differs slightly from
the Golf World magazine in some of the information it contains ‘ Resorts’. This is
most probably due to the fact that, as England is a predominantly temperate climate
and no mountain terrain, most people will be using this magazine as a precursor to a
prearranged holiday. To that point, the roles between producer and consumer are
arguably more important, since many of the people going on holiday may have to buy
or renew their equipment, furthermore it is less likely they will read the magazine
when a prearranged holiday is not upcoming. Not only that, but the magazine
mentions the end of the season for Skiing and Snowboarding with the onset of spring
(Daily Mail Ski & Snowboard March/April 2010) which may even mean that this
particular magazine will go out of production until the next season, highlighting a time
constraint not apparent in Golf World. This could allow us to assume that like the
Golf World magazine, the equipment or ‘gear’ section in this case may contain thinly
disguised promotional material, perhaps even more blatantly than the Golf World
magazine due to the presence of time constraints. However on reviewing the article
it is obvious that the opposite takes place, and this is a mostly informational article,
the only indication that there may be a commercial reasoning behind this article is the
fact that on the following page, there are pictures of Skis, and like the Golf World
magazine, these are accompanied by price and a short review of the Skis.

At the micro level, the lexical density is relatively high in comparison to Golf World.
This being a more information focused article than the Golf World article, has the
need to give as much information in a concise method. This differs from Golf World
because this article is explaining fairly in depth, some of the technical terms to do
with Skiing. What is clear immediately is the fact this is positioned closer to written
discourse unlike the Golf World article, which assumes the reader knows much more
about the subject. The fact that this article makes concessions for the fact that the
reader may not have a lot of knowledge of the subject and highlights the fact that the
audience are less likely to participate in this sport on a regular basis.

The article consists of 9 paragraphs with the form of Jargon – definition. The
definitions themselves make heavy use of vague adjectives to describe the jargon ‘ In
general’ ‘generally’ ‘tend to’. This again contrasts with the Golf World article, which
had a lot more technical precise information. The use of vague adjectives such as
this further highlights the fact that the audience not only may have little experience
with the sport, they also may just want an easy to process, easy to remember non-
technical and less lexically dense definition of the jargon. Indeed, there are 9
lexemes defined, all of which are potentially important to the audience. All the verb
forms in the text are declarative and affirmative, furthermore, only one of the verbs in
the entire article is modalised. What this means is, the information given is being
presented as factual and undisputed. This is in contrast to the Golf World article
whose goal to persuade the reader relies more heavily on modal verbs.

The repetition of words in this article is quite high ‘skis’ ‘flex’ ‘camber’ ‘designed’
however the ratio of content words to grammatical words is also quite high meaning
as aforementioned that it is a slightly harder read than the Golf World article.
Furthermore, there is still extensive use of undefined jargon ‘piste’ ‘topsheet’ ‘powder’
‘binding’. This jargon seems to be unavoidable and considering the nature of the
audience being addressed, then this is perhaps the only knowledge the audience is
assumed to have and is perhaps easily accessible to less advanced members of the
discourse community owing to the amount of equipment that needs to be bought
before you can even go Skiing(Daily Mail Ski & Snowboard March/April 2010).
It is clear that the audience needs a level of simplicity that is reflected by the use of
vague adjectives, this is however cancelled-out by the lexical density of the piece and
use of jargon, the result of trying to remain brief whilst imparting a lot of information.

Finally of note is the relative impersonality of the article ‘This refers’ ‘is known as’ ‘it
means that’ ‘is shown in’ which may be quite noticeable to an ‘outsider’ (Dillon 1992).
This is in contrast to the Golf World article, where it is more persuasion and opinion
oriented, the effect of this is personalizing and makes the discourse more accessible
to less advanced readers (Dillion 1992). This goes against what has been discussed
about both articles, considering the Golf World article is clearly intended for initiated
members of the community; the article is persuading the reader to upgrade , not just
purchase. However this conforms to advertisings aim to encourage consumerism
and make you feel dissatisfied with what you may already have (Cook 2001).
Furthermore the relative impersonality of the Ski article does mean it remains more
authoritative and unchallenged than the Golf World article, which is the main aim of
the text. (Dillion 1992)

These 2 texts have been shown to have similarities in their use of technical
language, but highly different in terms of their purposes. One has been shown to be
produced for an outside or less experienced member of a community that still uses
technical, undefined, and impersonal language which helps it to remain authoritative
(Dillon 1992). The other produced for initiated members that have knowledge of the
community discourse but uses a more personalised style that is closer to
conversation and written in a style more accessible to outsiders (Dillion 1992). It has
been shown language is intertwined with society (Beard 1998) and that with the
articles analysed, there is definite overlap with the genre of advertising (Bhatia 2004)
, and this is especially pronounced in the Golf World magazine, perhaps indicating an
underlying consumerist ideology within society
Bibliography

Bhatia, V (2004). ‘Worlds of Written Discourse’ : Continuum

Cook, G. (2001). ‘The Discourse of Advertising’ (2nd Ed). London : Routledge.

Daily Mail Ski & Snowboard March/April 2010 UK : Bauer Media

Golf World 05/2010: issue5,vol51 UK: Vos Media Ltd

Thornbury, S (2005). ‘Beyond the Sentence’ : Macmillan

Zummo, M (2008). ‘English and the Language of Sport’ facoltà di scienze motorie
dell’università degli studi di palermo vol. i, fasc. 3, sez. 1, 2008 issn: 1974-4331
Appendix

1 Daily Mail Ski & Snowboard March/April 2010 :67

2. Golf World 05/2010 : 119