metaphorik.de 07/2004

Sports reports on the radio, on television, or in newspapers are usually characterized by very vivid language full of metaphorical terms and expressions. After an introduction to the most prominent metaphor theories, this paper focuses on an analysis of metaphor usage in an English tennis report. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the spoken commentary of the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film, the aim of this paper is to establish how many and what kind of metaphors are typically used in this film, to which image donor fields the different metaphors belong, and how certain metaphors interact with each other within the commentary.

Sportkommentare in Rundfunk, Fernsehen und Zeitungen sind in der Regel geprägt von einer sehr lebhaften Sprache, die reich an metaphorischen Ausdrücken und Formulierungen ist. Der Schwerpunkt des vorliegenden Artikels liegt nach einer Beschreibung der bekanntesten Arbeiten zur Metapherntheorie auf einer Analyse des Gebrauchs von Metaphern in einer Englischen Tennisreportage: Basierend auf einer quantitativen und qualitativen Untersuchung des Kommentars des offiziellen Wimbledon-Films aus dem Jahre 2002 soll hierbei herausgefunden werden, welche Metaphern in diesem Film typischerweise verwendet werden, zu welchen übergeordneten Bildspenderkategorien sich einzelne Metaphern zusammenfassen lassen und wie Metaphern innerhalb des analysierten Kommentars miteinander verknüpft sind.

1. Introduction

No doubt because of its tradition and very special flair, the Wimbledon tennis tournament has become the biggest and most popular tennis event in the world. Each year, more than 400,000 spectators (an average of more than 30,000 per day) come to south London to see the heroes of the tennis scene live on court. Of course, this Grand Slam tournament is also one of the biggest annual media events in England. For example, in 2003 there were 3798 accredited journalists and photographers (788 press, 2757 broadcasting personnel, 253 photographers and photographic support staff) working at the All England Tennis Club – let alone the thousands of people working behind the scenes in the broadcasting stations and newspaper agencies. As far as television broadcasting is concerned, it has to be pointed out that during the two weeks of the tournament over 5000 hours of coverage are usually transmitted to approximately 1.8 billion people across 160 countries worldwide.[1] Apart from the live broadcasting (radio and television) and the reporting in the newspapers, each year, in cooperation with the BBC, the All England Club produces a so called Official Wimbledon Film – a report that summarizes the entire tournament. In these reports very vivid language full of metaphors is usually used by the commentator to describe the action on the courts and to make the entire film more interesting and more exciting. The present paper stems from a desire to find out more about the metaphors used in these films in particular and in the language of tennis reports in general. I will therefore analyse the commentary of the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film.

The paper is organized in the following way. First, I will describe the corpus. Then I will turn to the best known metaphor theories, namely Max Black’s Interaction Theory of Metaphor (1962), Lakoff’s and Johnson’s classical cognitive approach to metaphor theory (1980), and Weinrich’s linguistic theory of metaphorical image fields (1959). I will always take passages from the actual film as examples for the theoretical considerations described. Based on Weinrich’s model I will then in chapter 4 turn to a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the metaphors used in the 2002 Wimbledon Film in chapter 4. Here, the most popular image donor as well as the corresponding image recipient fields[2] will be identified. I will also try to have a closer look at how the metaphors of a certain image donor field are organized in the text.

2. Corpus

The Official Wimbledon Films, which are usually published about three months after the end of the tournament and which can be purchased either in bookstores or in the official Wimbledon gift-shop in London, trace the stories of the men’s, ladies’, and doubles’ events through the entire championship of a particular year. These films summarize the whole tournament in about 45 minutes. Since these reports are intended to be very funny, interesting, and exciting at the same time, only the visual highlights of the particular tournament (e.g. great rallies, sequences full of emotions, or amazing actions beside the tennis courts) are selected. These scenes are then combined with a commentary written by a famous British journalist (e.g. Neil Harman of The Times in 2002) and narrated by one of the most renowned English voices (Leslie Phillips). So the viewers are presented with a perfect combination of impressive pictures and a well prepared spoken commentary. Generally speaking, the perfectly prepared language used in the commentary of these films cannot be compared to the language used in live reports – which is much more spontaneous and therefore less metaphorical. Most people who buy and watch the Official Wimbledon Film of a certain year already know the result (at least the names of the winners in the men’s and women’s game), and may even have seen many matches live on television. They are real fans who want to see the highlights of the tournament combined with a good commentary. This helps to explain the vivid language used in these reports, as its function is not just to give the score but also to give opinions and explanations, and engage the viewer and listener on an emotional level.

The following analysis will be based on the 2002 film. The film has an overall length of 52:34 minutes. A complete transcript of the commentary – the basis for the analysis – is attached to this paper (see Appendix 1).

Before beginning with the analysis, it is necessary to have a closer look at certain linguistic theories of metaphor. I will now turn to a description of the most prominent ones.

3. Theoretical Framework

3.1 Max Black’s Interaction Theory of Metaphor

Max Black’s (1962, 1979) account of metaphor, known as the so called Interaction Theory because it is an elaboration and progression of Ivor Richards’ view of metaphor[3] as an “interaction of two thoughts” (1936: 100), offers some “important insight into the” structure, the “uses, and limitations” (Black 1962: 38) of this particular language phenomenon. Unlike the traditional comparison view of metaphor[4], such as is presented in Aristotle’s Rhetoric (350 BC), or the so called substitution theory, saying that any metaphor can be substituted by a literal utterance, the interaction view sees metaphor as a cognitive rather than a purely rhetorical device because it claims that this figure of a speech is a “cognitively irreducible phenomenon that works not on the level of word combination, but much deeper, arising out of the interactions between the conceptual structures” (Veale 2000: 1) underlying words and expressions[5]. But let us have a look at his model in detail. According to Black’s theory, each metaphorical statement consists of two different subjects to be identified as the ‘primary’ or ‘principal’ and the ‘secondary’ or ‘subsidiary’ one” (1962: 40). These two subjects involve two different realities that coalesce to form a new meaning. The metaphor (subsidiary subject) is the frame (the word or words used literally) that connects a variety of associated meanings to a focus (literal item), which is the principal term. Let us use a metaphorical statement taken from the transcript of the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film as an example for this dynamic interaction between frame and focus:

In this example the metaphoric interaction takes place between the focus of this utterance, which is the concept of a graveyard, and the frame (the literal surrounding), which in this particular case is first of all the tennis court number two at All England Club Wimbledon and secondly the word “champions” which makes it clear that on this court famous and successful players[7] used to play their matches. The reader or the hearer will now apply the system of associated commonplaces[8] triggered off[9] by the word “graveyard” to the literal context of this statement (the champions playing on court number two). So a set of “’associated applications’, comprised in the implicative complex, that are predicable” (Black 1979 quoted in Forceville 1998: 6) of the secondary subject (graveyard), is projected upon the primary subject. So the tasks of the hearer or the reader is to select the features of the secondary subject (the focus) fitting the literal frame and construct a “parallel implication complex” (Black 1979). Forceville (1998: 11) calls this process a “kind of mutual adjustment” or “matching process” between the properties of the two different subjects. Only if this matching process is successful will the meaning of the metaphorical utterance be understood. At this point Black (1962) emphasizes that this process is unidirectional and not reversible, therefore: A is B is a totally different metaphor than B is A. But let us now come back to the example sentence and have a look at the set of applications[10] associated with the secondary subject. It would probably include some of the following propositions:

- People who visit a graveyard often feel a lot of grief and sorrow because they’ve just lost a loved one.

One can see that the semantic features or the associations triggered off by a word like graveyard can be of a widely different nature. In the process of mapping or fitting the two subjects, which Forceville calls an “oscillation” (1996: 35), the hearer or reader has to pick out those semantic properties of the subsidiary subject that fit the literal frame. In this particular case the selected graveyard features projected upon the primary subject will probably be the facts that a graveyard has something to do with the end of your life, that it is a place where they put the dead, and that it is a place full of sorrow and grief[12]. So what would the overall meaning of a metaphor like “court two: the […] graveyard of champions” be in the context of this Wimbledon report?

In fact, this metaphor is merely intended to express the idea that on court number two at the Club a lot of successful and famous players lost their matches. It is indeed statistically proven that on this court many stars lost against underdogs, sometimes even in their first round matches. Therefore, losing a tennis match is like dying. And for the audience, losing one of their beloved stars, and watching him lose, causes a lot of sorrow and has a lot in common with a funeral.[13] Whenever a former champion has to play on this famous “graveyard of champions” it might be a bad omen for him or her: Many stars of the tennis scene lost there before and he or she might well be the next one. So this metaphor serves to create a certain image by highlighting the graveyard features of “court two”.

It becomes evident that a completely new meaning complex is constructed. New features that cannot be found in either the primary or the secondary subject result from a process of metaphor interpretation and allow conceptual innovation. By presenting metaphor as a cognitive operation, whose import cannot be communicated otherwise, Black´s (1962) theory underlies interactionist as well as cognitive approaches and in a certain sense already predicts these developments.

I will now focus on the classical cognitive metaphor theory which was first introduced by Lakoff and Johnson in their 1980 publication Metaphors We Live By. It was subsequently further elaborated by these two authors in some of their later works (e.g. Lakoff 1987) and has by now become the dominant paradigm in metaphor research.

3.2 Classical cognitive metaphor theory: Lakoff and Johnson’s approach

In their famous book Metaphors We Live By Lakoff and Johnson (1980) claim that metaphors are not mere poetical or rhetorical embellishments in literal language, but are omnipresent in our everyday speech as well as in our thinking and acting. Seen from the authors’ point of view our “ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature” (1980: 3). According to Lakoff and Johnson (1980), metaphors play an important role in defining our everyday realities: “Most of our ordinary conceptual system is metaphorical in nature” (1980: 4). Thus, metaphors are integral and not peripheral to language and understanding.

The two authors define metaphoric processes as “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (1980: 50). Based on this definition, they (1980: 14) identify three basic types of conceptual metaphors. These are: structural metaphors, orientational metaphors, and ontological metaphors. I will now turn to these three categories and describe each of them in detail.

3.2.1 Structural Metaphors

Structural metaphors, which are said to form the biggest group of metaphorical utterances and which are widely spread in language, involve characterising the structure of one concept by comparing it to the structure of some other concept. For Lakoff and Johnson (1980), structural metaphors are the most complex of the three types of metaphors, because they require the reader or hearer to transfer one basic domain of experience to another basic domain (117). The classic example is the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor. In this example, the verbal discourse of an argument is reframed in terms of the physical conflict of war. Statements like “to defend an argument”, “the leader of the discussion”, and “to attack the words of an opponent” reveal that the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor is very popular in our language. It becomes evident that these metaphors are not merely linguistic but relate directly to our experiences of the different concepts. Therefore, they are so to speak embedded in the conceptual framework of our culture[14]. This means that the kinds of metaphors we establish are a result of how we view the world, and not all perceptions are the same. In selecting the metaphors we live by, either consciously or unconsciously, we are choosing and creating our reality. When we decide to highlight certain aspects of these metaphors and conceal the features we find less consistent, we reveal what is most important in our lives (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 10). Further structural metaphors in our culture are for example Life is a Journey (“He has come a long way”) or TIME IS MONEY (“You’re wasting my time” or “This gadget will save you hours”[15]).

Structural metaphors used in the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film are especially THE TENNIS TOURNAMENT IS A ROUTE YOU WALK ALONG[16] (or A TENNIS MATCH IS A ROUTE) and TENNIS IS WAR. As far as the first metaphor is concerned typical expressions are

The TENNIS IS WAR metaphor is the most frequent metaphor in the analysed tennis report. It can be realized in the following statements:

Overall, 35 metaphors of war can be found in the Wimbledon Film.[17] So comparing the structure of war to tennis is very popular, obviously.[18] In fact, most kinds of sport are conceptualized by the help of metaphors of war (see for example Michels 2002 for an analysis of metaphors in French football reports).

I will now describe Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) second category of metaphors, which is the group of orientational metaphors.

3.2.2 Orientational Metaphors

Orientational or spatial metaphors are – like the terms already suggest – based on our orientation in space. In contrast to structural metaphors, orientational metaphors do not structure one concept in term of another, but they instead organize a whole system of concepts with respect to one another (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 14). These metaphoric expressions organize and structure certain concepts (e.g. Health is up, illness is down)[19] by giving them a spatial orientation. Orientational metaphors are rooted in our cultural and physical experience. Therefore, they are culture-dependant[20]. Koller (2003: 28) says that orientational or spatial metaphors show “image-schema structures, i.e. general structures like trajectories, boundaries or centre-periphery relations, which act as”

a means of structuring particular experiences schematically, so as to give order and connectedness to our perceptions and conceptions (Johnson 1987: 75 quoted in Koller 2003: 28)

Metaphors like “I'm feeling down” (underlying concept: happy is up; sad is down), “He’s climbing up the social ladder” (high status is up; low status is down), “Get up”, “He dropped dead” (conscious is up; unconscious is down), and “You are under my control” (powerful is up; powerless is down) are typical orientational metaphors because they provide a spatial relationship between the human subject and something found in the world. In the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film there are also a couple of orientational metaphors which in this case mainly serve to rate and judge a particular performance of a player, his strength in general, his success, or his degree of mental or physical fitness at a particular point in time, like the two following examples show:

(16) lines 61-62: “The Australian’s noted powers of concentration are at their peak.” (mental strength is up; mental weakness is down)

In all these examples the orientation in space should have become clear. I will now turn to the so-called ontological metaphors – Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) third category.

3.2.3 Ontological Metaphors

Ontological metaphors reveal that we understand many abstract experiences (such as events, activities, emotions, and ideas) in terms of concrete substances and processes. So these metaphors involve ways of viewing intangible concepts as entities. Identifying these abstract and indefinable non-entities as substances or entities makes it possible to "refer to them, categorize them, group them, and quantify them - and, by this means, reason about them" (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 25), and cognitively manipulate them.[21] An example of an ontological metaphor used in everyday life is that time is an object. This metaphor can be observed in statements such as “I don’t have enough time” or “I’m spending my time”. Treating the abstract concept of time as an object enables us to understand it and especially to quantify it. Besides these transformations of abstract concepts into something concrete, Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 29) use the term container metaphors to describe a certain kind of ontological metaphors.

A container metaphor is an ontological metaphor in which some concept is represented as having an inside and an outside. So non-physical objects (activities, actions, emotions etc.) are transformed into physical objects with definite boundaries. For example, sentences like “The ship is coming into view now” or “There’s nothing in sight” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 30) can only be understood because we rely on the deeply ingrained ontological metaphor “visual fields are containers”. Further examples of container metaphors would be “He’s in a bad mood”, “He fell into a depression” or “He’s out of the race now” (1980: 32). Some container metaphors used in the 2002 Official Wimbledon are:

(17) line 9: “In the women’s game …” (the women’s tournament as a container)

(18) line 25: “…one of the heavyweights in this game.” (the tennis sport as a container)

(19) lines 134-135: “…the only former champion left in the tournament.” (tournament as a container)

In all these cases the tennis tournament in Wimbledon or the sport in general is conceptualized metaphorically as a container.

The last important group of ontological metaphors are personifications – utterances in which a thing or abstraction is represented as a person, and in which human characteristics are imposed on inhuman experiences. Let us have a look at some examples taken from the Wimbledon film-transcript[22]:

Summing it up, one could say that an ontological metaphor is a metaphor in which an abstraction, such as an activity, an emotion, a state or idea, is represented as something concrete, such as an object, a substance, a container, or a person.

No doubt, Lakoff’s and Johnson’s (1980) contribution to cognitive metaphor theory can be considered a milestone in metaphor research. But it has to be pointed out that other scholars, especially the Germans Hans Blumenberg (1960) and Harald Weinrich (1958; 1963), had reached the same or very similar results a few years before. Thus, Blumenberg as well as Weinrich have anticipated central aspects of the cognitive approach. But Lakoff and Johnson (1980) appear to have overlooked these works – at least, these theories are not mentioned in Metaphors We Live By. Identifying the similarities between the older approaches and Lakoff’s and Johnson’s (1980) account on metaphor will maybe “lessen the originality of the cognitive approach” a little (Jäkel 2001: 23). Nevertheless, Blumenberg’s and Weinrich’s theories “should not be ignored by a cognitive theory that can still be amended” (Jäkel 2001: 23). I will now focus on Weinrich’s[23] (1958) linguistic theory of metaphorical “image fields” firstly because it comes closest to the cognitive theory of metaphor, and secondly because it introduces some terms and ideas that go beyond this theory and that will be useful for the analysis of the Wimbledon Film afterwards[24].

3.3 Weinrich’s linguistic theory of metaphorical image fields

In his theoretical discussion of metaphor, which is based on a philological-linguistic observation of everyday as well as literary language, Weinrich (1958; 1963) “displays his conceptual understanding of metaphor, analyzing linguistic metaphors not in isolation but situated within” (Jäkel 2001: 23) larger domains – the so called image fields.[25] By giving examples like “Wortschatz” (‘vocabulary’, literally translated: ‘word treasure’), “Prägen von Wörtern” (‘coining of words’) or “Wortreichtum” (‘abundance of words’) he emphasizes that none of these expressions is isolated but “from the moment of its birth it is rooted in a firm image field. In this particular case he formulates the image field WORD CURRENCY (Wortmünze), when according to Lakoff’s and Johnson’s (1980) theory we would have the conceptual metaphors WORDS ARE COINS or LANGUAGE AS FINANCE. So the term image field can be considered the equivalent to the term conceptual metaphor in cognitive metaphor theory. In general, each of Weinrich’s image fields of the type AB (like WORD CURRENCY) can be translated into a conceptual metaphor of the pattern A is B, A as B or vice versa (Jäkel 2001: 180). And many of the image fields mentioned in Weinrich’s theory (1958; 1963) can be rediscovered as conceptual metaphors in Lakoff’s and Johnson’s work: e.g. LIFE JOURNEY, LOVE WAR, and WORLD THEATRE. Weinrich (1958: 286) calls attention to the fact that the different image fields existing in a language are in most cases not completely separated from each other, because some metaphors might belong to two or even more image fields. Furthermore, the same image fields often exist in different languages that have the same or a similar cultural background, e.g. the Western European languages. For example, the metaphor “to coin a word” can be literally translated to a couple of different languages without losing its metaphorical meaning: 1. ein Wort prägen (German); 2. forger un mot (French); 3. cuniare una parola (Italian).[26] According to Weinrich (1958: 287), the languages that have many image fields in common form an image field community (Bildfeldgemeinschaft). But what are the crucial parts of a metaphor, and how does the listener or reader manage to construct a meaning? I will now turn to these points.

Weinrich (1958: 283) says that what really takes place in the actual and apparently singular metaphor is the linkage of two conceptual domains (Sinnbezirke) or semantic fields. One of these conceptual domains is the image donor (Bildspender) and the other one is the image recipient (Bildempfänger), Weinrich’s (1958: 285) terminological equivalents to the source domain and target domain of the cognitive approach. In the example mentioned above (WORD CURRENCY) LANGUAGE would be the image recipient field. And the semantic field of FINANCE would be the image donor field. In general, the image field includes all metaphorical expressions that emerge from the linkage of the two semantic domains of the image donor and the image recipient field. This idea is of course very close to Lakoff’s and Johnson’s (1980) approach.

But there is one crucial difference between Weinrich’s (1958; 1963) and Lakoff’s and Johnson’s theory (1980).[27] While Lakoff and Johnson analyse a metaphorical expression only in the context of the particular conceptual metaphor it belongs to, Weinrich puts emphasis on the fact that the written or spoken context of a metaphor is also very important. Consequently, according to his theory it is in most cases impossible to completely understand the meaning of a metaphorical expression without considering the context. So it is not only the linkage of two semantic fields but also the communicative dimension of a metaphor in a certain text that constructs the meaning of such an expression.

I will now turn to an analysis of the image donor fields used in the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film.[28] This quantitative and qualitative analysis will mainly be based on Weinrich’s terminology.

4. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the image donor fields used in the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film commentary

The first result to be yielded by quantitative analysis is that the commentary of the 2002 Official Wimbleodon Film shows a total number of 102 metaphorical expressions. These expressions are taken from 13 different image donor fields.[29] In table number one all image donor fields identified in the film are listed and arranged according to their frequency (overall number and percentage). I will now describe the most frequent and the most interesting image donor fields. Furthermore, I will analyse how the metaphors are used in the commentary and describe the situations in which they are used.

4.1 The image donor field “War/Military/Fighting”

The image donor field of “War/Military/Fighting” is the one used most often (35 occurrences, 34.8%). Especially when the action on court is described, metaphors of war are used to make the language more interesting and to address the viewer and listener on an emotional level. Through all these metaphors of war the producers try to make the whole sport action shown in the film seem more serious and aggressive. So a well played, unattainable backhand becomes “an explosive backhand winner” (lines 227), a long rally is described as a “baseline battle” (line 124), playing and winning against your opponent is “bombarding” (line 104) and finally “eliminating” (line 95) him, and two players playing against each other on court are seen as “the fiercest of rivals” (line 189) or nemeses (line 49) who are “gunning” for different sides (line 198-199) and who are both digging for victory (line 92). Beside the description of certain actions on court, metaphors of war, military, and fighting are also used to illustrate particular emotions, feelings, and character traits of certain players. So Leyton Hewitt, a player who is said to never give up a match no matter how hopeless the situation seems, is called an “inveterate fighter” (line 223). Furthermore, the speaker often uses the terms “heroism” (e.g. in line 2), “sacrifice” (line 2), and “triumph” (e.g. in lines 31, 39) to describe the emotions involved when you win or lose a single match or the whole tournament.[30] But the metaphors of war are not only used as far as the description of the players, their emotions, and the actions on court are concerned – although these are of course the dominant image recipient fields. Expressions of war are also used to describe the spectators. For example, when the narrator emphasizes the popularity of Tim Henman, he calls Tim’s fans “legions of supporters” (line 64). One could conclude that the whole tournament – players, their emotions, their character traits, actions on court, spectators – is transferred into a war scenario through the commentary. And expressions like “legions of supporters” (line 64) are created and used because they perfectly fit into this picture and into the metaphorical cluster. The term metaphorical cluster describes the tendency of metaphoric expressions to be linked to and to refer to each other within a text (see Koller 2003). Figure 1 illustrates this phenomenon by showing how certain metaphors from one image donor filed interact with each other within the commentary.[31]

Expressions from the image donor field “Route/Way/Line” are also used quite frequently throughout the entire commentary (14 tokens, 13.7 %). For example, the whole tournament from the first round matches to the finals and from week one of the championship to week two is described as a “route” (line 147) a player has to walk along. This metaphor can be considered the leading metaphor. All the other metaphorical expressions that I will now describe fit into or are derived from this leading metaphor. I call these metaphors derived metaphors (see figure 1): A player who wins a match “progresses” (line 30) to the next round. A player who finally reaches[33] the last match of the whole tournament can say that his “route to the final has mapped out perfectly” (line 147). The opponents a player has to “face” on his “way” (line 78) to the final are described as persons who stand “in his way” (line 148), who want to knock him “off course” (143), and sweep him aside (line 49).[34]

Figure 1: Metaphor Cluster “Route/Way/Line – leading metaphor and derived metaphors in the commentary.

Moreover, the route metaphors are also used when certain situations and developments in a particular match are described: When a player has lost the first two sets of a match and wins the third and fourth set he is said to be “back on track” (line 129). Consequently, expressions from the image donor field “Route/Way/Line” are first of all used to describe the overall success of a player in the Wimbledon tournament, and secondly to describe certain situations and developments in the course of a particular match. The closer a player gets to winning the further he progresses on the route to the next round or to the final. The first round match of the tournament (or the beginning of a particular match) is so to speak the starting point and the victory in the final match (or in this particular match) can be considered the finish line.

4.3 The image donor field “Religion/Bible”

Sport and religion, which are both deeply rooted in our society, certainly have a lot in common. And sometimes it even seems that sport has already replaced certain parts of religion in our society. While attendances at Masses on Sundays constantly keep on falling, new football stadiums or sport arenas in general are built throughout the country. People go to these arenas week by week because they want to watch their heroes play. They want to see matches full of passion. They want to see the opponents suffer and they want to see their own team win. So today’s sport stars are the heroes that are worth praising and adoring. And consider a typical football fan wearing a t-shirt, a cap and a scarf with the name of his favourite club on it. This has a lot in common with religious symbols and attitudes. Obviously, a nation's spirituality nowadays is partly reflected in its interest in sport. One could conclude that it is sport, not God, that has mass appeal in modern secular societies. So it is no surprise that metaphorical expressions from the image donor field “religion/Bible” also play an important role in the language of sport – e.g. in the commentary of the 2002 Wimbledon Film.

Actually, there are not many metaphorical expressions from this image donor field in the Wimbledon Film (5 occurrences, 4.9 %). Nevertheless, these metaphors are certainly worth mentioning. The phrase “graveyard of champions” (line 44) has already been described in detail in chapter 3.1. Let us have a look at the other expressions from this semantic field. When some of the top seed players had lost their matches the speaker said that “the Gods of tennis were not looking kindly on” (lines 42) them. Furthermore, the fact that three Russian players were defeated within one single day is described as the “Russian Exodus” (lines 55-56). Of course, speaking of an exodus makes the whole thing more dramatic and emotional. It seems like a catastrophe for the Russian people although it is just the end of the tournament for these three players. The last phrase of the commentary I will describe here is actually taken from the Bible: “The writing is on the wall” (Book of Daniel 5. 25-26) for the brave fellow (lines 228 in the commentary). It is used in the commentary at the point when the two finalists enter centre court. It is supposed to be a warning: Be careful. You never know what is going to happen outside there. The end is near. In the Bible the passage “Mene Mene Tekel Uparsin” can be translated and interpreted as follows: Mene, God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end. So the Bible is consulted here to create more excitement and to – once again – involve the listener and viewer on an emotional level.

4.4 The image donor field “Nature/Animals”

There are four metaphorical expressions from the image donor field “Nature/Animals” in the commentary of the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film (3.9 %). They are mainly used to make it clear that a particular event is very special and outstanding. For instance, the words pinnacle and peak, which stand for the highest point of a mountain – a point that is in most cases quite hard to reach –, are used metaphorically to describe “the pinnacle of a certain English player’s “career” (line 26) or the “peak” of Leyton Hewitt’s “noted powers of concentration” (line 72). Consequently, these expressions of nature are used to illustrate a great performance in the tournament or in the match. Furthermore, the expression “the tide turns[35] for Tim” (lines 61-62) is used to illustrate a crucial moment in Henman’s match against Wayne Ferreira. Henman was about to lose this match, but from this moment on, he was back on track and he finally won. So the metaphorical expression “the tide turns” (line 72) is used to describe a great change in the course of a match.

Table 1: A quantitative analysis of the image donor fields used in the 2002 Wimbledon Film commentary

The most interesting metaphor in the context of nature and animals is the name “the Russian bear” (line 33) for the large Russian top-player Marat Safin. Since this player is said to be one of the most powerful ones on the man’s tour the comparison to a bear becomes comprehensible. But “Russian bear” is also a national stereotype (Russians are big and strong like bears). National stereotypes are often portrayed in sporting language. Sporting commentary, written or spoken, abounds with players and teams being described as reflections of perceived national characteristics. For example, German football teams, like Bayern Munich, are often described as being ‘machine-like’ and efficient. Latin American football teams on the other hand are often said to be brilliant but volatile. Borg and Enquist, two famous Swedish tennis players, were said to be ice-cool, and players from the USA are often described as sunny boys who don’t take their sport too seriously. So no matter what kind of sport it is, national stereotypes obviously play an important role in the commentaries.

5. Summary and Conclusion

In this paper I have first of all provided a general overview of the most prominent metaphor theories. I have also introduced the vocabulary necessary for discussing and analysing metaphorical expressions. The analysis of the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film commentary has shown that this particular text contains 102 metaphors. One could conclude that using metaphors is obviously a very popular measure to make the language of spoken tennis commentaries more interesting, to address the viewer and listener on an emotional level, and to make the action shown in the film appear to be more exciting. So metaphors can be considered an integral part of the language of sport commentaries in general and tennis commentaries in particular. Another important result to be yielded by quantitative analysis is that these metaphorical expressions belong to thirteen different image donor fields. The image donor field “War/Military/Fighting” is the most popular one. One could say that the whole tournament – players, their emotions, their character traits, actions on court, spectators – is turned into a war scenario through the commentary. So an ordinary tennis tournament becomes a battlefield by means of language. And all the war attributes are transferred to the semantic domain of tennis through these metaphors.

Additionally, metaphors from the image donor fields “Religion/Bible” as well as “Nature/Animals” play an important role in the commentary. Just like a church the tennis tournament attracts the masses. The sport becomes a religion. The spectators want to see the opponents of their favourite players suffer on court. They want to see their heroes win, and they want to feel hate and anger as well as pure joy during a match. The spectators praise and adore the players. And hopefully, none of their favourites has to play on court two, “the notorious graveyard of champions” (line 44). It becomes evident, that religious expressions are used to emphasize the quasi-religious meaning of the tournament.

Expressions from the semantic field “Nature/Animals” are mostly used to illustrate certain actions on court, great performances, and emotions. Furthermore, the metaphorical stereotype “Russian Bear” (line33) is used to illustrate the physical strength of a certain Russian player.

Additionally, as far as metaphors from the image donor field “Route/Way/Line” are concerned – also a very popular image donor field in this text – it should have become clear that these metaphorical expressions are not merely a collection of isolated metaphors (e.g. as in case of metaphors from the image donor fields “nature/animals” or “religion/Bible”). But they do sometimes also have an intratextual function and refer to each other (as in case of the metaphors from the image donor field Route/Way/Line).

References

Aristotle (350 BC). Rhetoric. Book 3. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts. n.d. The Internet Classics Archive. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. n.d. Available: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html. February, 27th 2004.

Black, Max (1962). “Metaphor.” In: Black, Max. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca, N.Y.: Routledge.

Black, Max (1979). “More about metaphor.” In: Ortony, Andrew. (ed.). Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge et al.: CUP, 19-45.

Blumenberg, Hans (1960). “Paradigmen zu einer Metapherologie.” In: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte Vol. 6. Bonn: Bouvier, 7-142.

Forceville, Charles (1998). Pictorial Metaphors in Advertising. London: Routledge.

Jäkel, Olaf (2001). “Kant, Blumenberg, Weinrich – Some forgotten contributions to the cognitive theory of metaphor.” In: Gibbs, Raymond W. and Steen, Gerard J. (eds.). Metaphor in Cognitive Linguisitcs: Selected papers from the fifth international cognitive linguistics conference in Amsterdam, July 1997. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 9-27.

Lakoff, George and Marc Johnson (1980). Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lakoff, George (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Michels, Anke (2002). „Metaphern in Französischen Fußballreportagen.“ In: Metaphorik.de 02/2002. Available: http://www.metaphorik.de/02/michels.htm . November, 3rd, 2004.

Richards, Ivor Armstrong (1936). The Philosophy of Rhetoric. New York: Oxford University Press.

The 2002 Official Wimbledon Film. Film produced for the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club by WI. London: ALTC 2002.

Weinrich, Harald (1958). “Münze und Wort: Untersuchungen an einem Bildfeld.“ In: Weinrich, Harald. (ed. 1976). Sprache in Texten. Stuttgart: Klett, 276-290.

Weinrich, Harald (1963). “Semantik der kühnen Metapher.“ In: Weinrich, Harald. (ed.). 1976. Sprache in Texten. Stuttgart: Klett, 295-316.

Appendix 2: Metaphorical expressions found in the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film (sorted according to the image donor fields they belong to)

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “War/Military/Fighting”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Human Body/Human Behaviour/Emotions/Gestures/Personifications”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Route/Way/Line”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “near/far, inside/outside/in front of/behind, up/down” (orientational metaphors according to Lakoff’s and Johnson’s terminology)

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Weather/Sailing”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Religion/Bible”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Nature/Animals”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Literature/Reading”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Machines”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Photography/Viewing”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Life/Death”

Metaphorical expressions belonging to the image donor field “Job/Work”

[1] All numbers were taken from the Official Wimbledon Website: http://www.wimbledon.org .

[2] The terms will be described in chapter 3.3.

[3] Richards (1936) created the interactional model of metaphor. He claimed that metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon that works not on the level of word combination, but it arises from the interactions between the conceptual structures underlying words. He developed the term 'tenor' for the first and 'vehicle' for the second part of a metaphor and said that “the co-presence of the vehicle and tenor results in a meaning (to be clearly distinguished from the tenor) which is not attainable without their interaction…. that vehicle and tenor in co-operation give a meaning of more varied powers than can be ascribed to either….” (1936: 100).

[4] To Black, the comparison view represents a broader approach to metaphor he calls substitution view, which “holds that a metaphorical expression is used in place of some equivalent literal expression” (Black 1962: 31 quoted in Koller 2003: 20). So seen from Aristotle’s point of view, metaphors were similes with suppressed or deleted predications of similarity.

[5] While Aristotle (350 BC) restricted metaphorical expressions to words or even single nouns, Black believes that “any part of speech can be used metaphorically” (1962: 68): So “metaphor’s domains should be seen as systems rather than isolated things or ideas” (Koller 2003: 22). So “a metaphor does not obtain at the level of a word “but on the level of discourse” (Forceville 1998: 7).

[6] This expression is rather well established in the language of sports in general and it is closely linked to the Wimbledon tournament in particular.

[7] I’m talking about players who have won this tournament at least once.

[8] By this expression Black means “a set of standard beliefs […] that are the common possession of the members of some speech community.” (1962: 40). These beliefs are culture dependent and may be created ad hoc by the author or speaker.

[9] In every metaphorical statement a particular word or phrase triggers the listener’s attention and makes it clear that this statement must not be taken literally.

[10] In his 1962 publication on metaphors Black calls it system of commonplaces.

[11] In England there are mostly no candles burning on the graves. I’m thinking of a typical German graveyard (catholic).

[12] These features can be considered the ones fitting the literal frame. They are mappable. The fact that there are flowers lying on graves in a graveyard is certainly less important. You can understand the metaphor without having this picture in mind. The metaphor is therefore like a filter which reveals some aspects of the primary subject and hides others.

[13] The German word Favoritensterben, meaning literally the death of a favourite in the domain of sports, has exactly the same meaning.

[14] Being “embedded in the culture” is itself a container metaphor belonging to the group of ontological metaphors. I will discuss ontological metaphors later in this paper.

[15] The examples were taken from Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 7).

[16] I will describe this metaphor in detail in chapter 4.2.

[17] For further details see chapter 4.

[18] I will turn to the reasons for using war metaphors in this scenario later on.

[19] Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 18) emphasize the fact that sometimes “spatialization is so essential a part of a metaphor that it is difficult for us to imagine any alternative metaphor that might structure the concept.”

[20]While directional oppositions (up-down, in-out, front-back, etc.) are physical in nature, they aren't always the same for every culture. For example, while some cultures may see the future as ahead of us, others view it as behind us (1980: 14).

[21] Most ontological metaphors are so fundamental to our thought and language, that we don't often identify them as metaphors any more.

[22] I will not discuss the following examples in detail. In each example the personification should become clear.

[23] For a description of Blumbenberg’s (1960) theory see Jäkel (2001).

[24] Especially, as far the identification of the different metaphorical “image fields” dominant in this tennis report are concerned. For a description of Blumbenberg’s theory see Jäkel (2001).

[25] Lakoff and Johnson as well as Black analysed individual metaphors but they did not consider a particular metaphor as a part of an image field or a group of metaphors.

[26] The examples were taken from Weinrich (1958: 287).

[27] It is indeed the biggest advantage of Weinrich’s theory.

[28] See Appendix 2 for details.

[29] Of course, a lot more image donor fields could be found, but in this analysis certain image donor fields are summarized in larger categories. e.g. the image donor fields “Human Body/Human Behaviour/Emotions/Gestures/Personifications” are put together in one group.

[30] Some metaphors are used three or four times in the film.

[31] Weinrich points out that those metaphors that are linked to others within a text can be understood more easily by the recipient (Weinrich 1958).

[32] In this analysis I will not focus on the image donor field “Human Body/Human Behaviour/Emotions/Gestures/Personifications”, because these metaphors have already been described in detail in 3.2.3 (ontological metaphors). Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that there are 16 metaphors from the image donor field “Human Body/…” in this commentary (15.7 %).

[33] This is another metaphor which is not used in the film but which would perfectly fit into this metaphor cluster.

[34] So according to Weinrich (1976) in this particular case the image field would be TOURNAMENT ROUTE.

[35] This is a very popular expression.

Cutting the Russian Bear down to size on the graveyard of champions – An analysis of the metaphors used in the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film

Torben Schmidt, Frankfurt (mail@torbenschmidt.de)

Abstract