Introduction

Football comes in many shapes and colours and goes by many names. One of them, of course, is its
synonym soccer – an “odious little word” in comparison with football, according to Seddon (2004:3) –
used especially to distinguish it from the American variety, as in World Soccer, the well-known football
magazine. Other expressions are of a less objective, descriptive nature. Thus, among football
aficionados, football is often, and lovingly, referred to as “the beautiful game”, a phrase gaining currency
in the wake of the brilliant – and aesthetically pleasing football displayed by Brazilian national teams in
the 1950s and 1960s. Another widely used term, of older standing, is “the people’s game”.

The present-day status of football as the world’s most popular sport “the world’s game”, another
frequent appellation (cf. e.g. the title of Murray 1996) is almost a truism. It may be illustrated and
supported by some relevant figures, drawn from the so-called Big Count carried out by FIFA (Fédération
Internationale de Football Association) in 2006: 265 million players (239 million males, 26 million
females), 5 million referees and officials, 1.7 million teams, 0.3 million clubs (cf. Kunz 2007). In other
words, the grand total of people actively involved in football amounts to some 270 million worldwide, a
staggering figure, to which should be added all those more passively involved as spectators, “live”, via
television or on the web. For example, as noted by Goldblatt (2007:x), “[a]round half the planet watched
the 2006 World Cup Final three billion people have never done anything simultaneously before.”

Thus, in terms of numbers alone, football in the early 21st century may be seen as an unrivalled, still
unfolding success story, the culmination of a cumbersome journey where the road has been long and
winding. The story, in outline, is well known by now. The standard version will include at least the
following ingredients (cf. e.g. Goldblatt 2007):

 football’s humble beginnings in “the mob game of medieval Britain” (Wilson 2008:10), a largely
unregulated, often brutal, kick-and-rush village pastime, where rioting was never far away certainly “the
people’s game”, hardly “the beautiful game”;

 the adoption and development of the traditional, wildgrown “street football” by English public schools
in the late 18th and early 19th centuries;

 the birth of the modern game by regulation (Laws of the Game) in the 1860s, in a distinctly upper-class
context;

 its somewhat paradoxical, increasing appeal to British working-class people, alongside its gradual
international spread, mediated by sailors, engineers and businessmen, within and outside Europe, from
the late 19th and throughout the 20th century;

 its close financial ties with the international media industry, in particlar since the mid-1990s, ever-
extending TV coverage paving the way for the big money.

1
The last few decades have seen football undergo an accelerating process of commercialization, where
merchandise, private ownership of clubs, sponsorship deals, multi-billion TV contracts and stock market
introductions have become glaring features of its present-day environment. Top-level football has long
ceased to be a mere sport; it is just as much a socio-economic phenomenon, an arena for big business
and big businessmen around the globe. In short, “the people’s game” has indeed become “the world’s
game”, the global sport par excellence, commanding the close attention of untold numbers of people,
regardless of social and political conditions, in most parts of the world.

In a local context, a successful football club may contribute substantially to the perceived identity, and
projected image, of smaller or larger places and communities (cf. Andersson 2002, 2011).
Internationally, today’s football especially of the professional, big-club brand finds itself, more than
ever, at the crossroads of sport and the entertainment industry. In terms of coverage, the FIFA World
Cup makes up the world’s biggest media event, bigger than the Olympics. Football, of course, has long
been a conspicuous part of mass culture in many countries, of historical and political importance, well
beyond the domain of sport alone. Goldblatt (2007:xiv) argues that “[n]o history of the modern world is
complete without an account of football.” In a similar vein, in a postwar European context, the impact of
football as a political factor is stressed by Judt (2007:782): “What really united Europe was football.”

The concept of register was developed by Australian linguist M.A.K. Halliday(1978), who made a
distinction between dialect and register . A dialect is a varietyaccording to the user, whereas a register is
a variety according to the use. The formeris what someone speaks habitually and is primarily
determined by such variables as:social class, age or sex. The latter is what someone is speaking at the
time and is de-termined by the kind of activity in which language is being used (Halliday 1978: 35).In
other words, it is a variety of language which corresponds to a variety of situation.

Register can be understood in two ways. In a broader sense, it is a variety of language associated with
such parameters as: addressee, setting, mode of communication, task or topic. However, some
researchers use the term to refer to the specific vocabulary used by various occupational groups
(Holmes 2001: 246). For the sake of this paper, we will be referring to register in its broader sense as
register studies should not be solely restricted to vocabulary. They have to include (and, in fact, they do
include) other aspects of language as well. As Ferguson (1994: 20) rightly claims,‘people participating in
recurrent communication situations tend to develop similar vocabularies, similar features of intonation,
and characteristic bits of syntax and phonology that they use in these situations’.Wardhaugh
emphasizes a different aspect of registers, referring to them as ‘sets of language items associated with
discrete occupational or social groups’ (Wardhaugh 2002: 51). As a matter of fact, studies of register
variation have focused on the registers employed by specific groups such as, for example, sports
announcers (Ferguson 1983), students (Reppen 2001), researchers (Conrad 2001), or even parents using
baby talk when addressing their children (Ferguson 1977).According to Halliday (1978: 33), every
register is determined by three variables field mode and tenor, which

have a pronounced impact on the linguistic features of discourse. Field has to do with the setting in
which communication occurs, and includes the purpose and subject matter or topic of the
communication process. In otherwords, this dimension embraces what is being talked about and

2
involves the activity of the speaker and the participant(s) in a particular setting. Mode, in turn, refers to
the channel or medium of communication; i.e. the choice between speech and writing.Finally, tenor
shows the relationship between the speaker and the addressee. There are two kinds of tenor: personal
and functional (Gregory and Carroll 1978: 51–54).The first one reflects the formality level of the
situation (how the speakers view eachother), whereas the other one is used to show the role that
language is playing in the situation (what it is being used for, e.g., to inform, warn, or persuade).

Football language

A “special language” and a public one

As noted by Seddon (2004:4), Dr Johnson’s famous English dictionary of 1755 does include the word
football – but only in the concrete sense of the spherical object itself, the ball. The sense of ‘footballing
activity’, i.e. the game of football, is missing, despite the fact that football as a rough sort of pastime was
not unknown in Dr Johnson’s days, although in decline (cf. Goldblatt 2007:19ff.). It was only some
hundred years later that football staged its great comeback, gradually spawning what may today be
regarded as the world’s biggest ”special language”.

Now, special languages are obviously used to talk and write about special subjects, whether of an
abstruse nature, like theoretical physics, or of a more readily accessible, down-to-earth kind, like
football. They are defined as follows by Sager et al. (1980): “Special languages are semi-autonomous,
complex, semiotic systems based on and derived from general language” (p. 68); further, they are made
up of “the totality of means of expressions used by specialists in messages about their special subject”
(p. 74).

Transferred to the “special subject” of football, the “specialists” are simply all those people around the
world involved in today’s football one way or another, on or off the pitch. Collectively, when
communicating about football, they produce and are exposed to vast amounts of specialized language,
i.e football language in a wide sense, in a multitude of different countries and languages. Nonetheless,
despite the diverse settings in which it can be talked and written about, football as a subject can be seen
as “a well-delimited special domain” (Schmidt 2008:20). It follows that football language, the original
variety of which is football English, is indeed a special language, albeit somewhat unusual in that its use
is not restricted to a relatively small number of specialists. On the contrary, it may well be argued that it
is the most widespread special language of all as far as the number of people using it, in different parts
of the world, is concerned. This also means that, despite its function as a special language, football
language is arguably, more than any other, also a public language, a somewhat paradoxical state of
affairs.The public aspect of football language is not least due to the present-day media coverage of the
game. This, in turn, is closely related to the link between football and the entertainment industry, with
great commercial potential, as noted earlier. However, today’s football can also be seen as “the most
universal cultural phenomenon in the world” (Goldblatt 2007:xii; cf. Herzog 2002). Like rock music or

3
computer games, it is part of popular culture in a wide sense. The term “mass culture” is equally well
suited to capture its divided identity between sport and entertainment. As further testimony to the
presence of “the beautiful game” in modern consciousness, football has increasingly come to provide
the setting for fiction and films with a wider focus, e.g. Nick Hornby’s novel Fever Pitch (1992; later
made into a film), Friedrich Christian Delius’s Der Sonntag, and Weltmeister wurde (1994) or films like
Bend It Like Beckham (2002). The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano’s book on football, El fútbol a sol y
sombra(1995; Swedish translation 1998) may also be mentioned in this connection, as a sign of the
attention nowadays paid to football as part of contemporary entertainment and culture in a wide sense.

The broad interface between football as sport and football as entertainment or popular culture will
naturally leave its mark on our perception of football language as a special language, e.g. in terms of the
vocabulary used when communicating about various aspects of the game. Thus, football language is not
only about teams, free kicks, dribblers and offside; it is also about transfer windows, silly seasons and
signings, as well as chanting, fans and hooligans. It is the language used about football in the Laws of the
Game, on the pitch and on the terraces, in the media, and beyond a special and a public language rolled
into one. Speakers of football language literally run into millions, not to say billions, from active players
to armchair fans watching the game on TV or online.

In view of its public nature, an interesting question relating to football language concerns precisely its
degree of “specialness” or specificity. In particular, how specific, i.e. how sharply delimited, is it from
general language? As quoted above, a special language is “based on and derived from general language”
(Sager et al. 1980:68). In the case of football language, the boundary between football language and
general language is arguably more porous than in the case of most other special languages, e.g. Aviation
English and Legal English. For one thing, it is impossible to talk or write about football without using
ordinary general language items like the nouns goal, player and team, or verbs like win and lose. These,
as well as a host of other everyday words, make up an indispensable part of football language at large.

In the opposite direction, as it were, English general-purpose dictionaries as well as learners’ dictionaries
regularly include many lexical items that may reasonably be regarded as typical of the football domain,
technical football terms such as free kick and offside, which may thus also be seen as part of general
language (cf. Svensén 2009:71f.). In this way, it may be argued, there is a partial fusion of football
language and general language. A further indication of this state of affairs is that it is not unusual for
what are in fact technical football terms and phrases to be adopted as metaphorical expressions in
general language contexts, outside football.

Football in linguistic research

In view of its status as the world’s number one sport as well as a mass cultural phenomenon, it should
come as no surprise that football has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, increasingly so in
recent years. Thaler (2008:392) notes that football as a “global cultural phenomenon” is nowadays
“widely discussed in academic discourse”, mentioning such diverse fields as linguistics, religion, art,
psychology, pedagogy, aesthetics, economics and philosophy; history and sociology could also be
mentioned (cf. the bibliography in Goldblatt 2007). However, despite the fact that Thaler (2008)

4
mentions linguistics in connection with football, it would appear that comparatively little scholarly
attention has been paid to football language as a special language, especially in comparison with more
traditional ESP fields like Business English or Academic English (cf. Dudley-Evans & St John 1998).
Football language, as already argued, makes up the most widespread special language of all in terms of
the number of people using it, as regards speaking and writing as well as listening and reading. It should,
therefore, be of obvious linguistic interest, as should sports language in general. Nonetheless, at least to
the best of our knowledge, no large-scale, systematic inventory of English football vocabulary has so far
been undertaken; there is no comprehensive, let alone scholarly, dictionary of English (nor of any other)
football language.This lack of lexicological and lexicographic coverage may be contrasted to the
existence of special-language dictionaries like, to name but a few, the Oxford Dictionary of Business
English (1993) or the Cambridge Air and Space Dictionary (1990) not to mention the field of Academic
English, to which especially large amounts of scholarly as well as pedagogical interest have been
devoted in recent years (cf. e.g. Biber et al. 1999, Schleppegrell 2004, Carter & McCarthy 2006:267–294,
Longman Exams Dictionary 2006). In actual fact, Lavric et al.’s The Linguistics of Football (2008), dealing
with a plethora of languages, may be seen as a pioneering work, as indicated by its publication date. In
her “Introduction” to the volume (p. 5), Eva Lavric stresses the potential of football as a field of linguistic
inquiry: In other words, interest in football language is a fairly recent scholarly concern, except, it may
be argued, with regard to English loanwords in other languages, to which considerable attention has
been paid, especially concerning sports language at large (cf. e.g. Schönfelder 1954, Fisiak 1964,
Tingbjörn 2003). Despite this, however, the total volume of research specifically devoted to football
language may be described as relatively limited.

To be sure, Lavric et al. (2008) do account for a great deal of interesting work on football language,
English and other, mostly relating to reporting and commentary in different media (e.g. Chovanec 2008,
Vierkant 2008; cf. also Ferguson 1983, Anderson 1994). Fields dealt with include, among
others,vocabulary and phraseology (e.g. Levin 2008, Schmidt 2008) as well as grammar (Müller 2008,
Walker 2008, Wiredu & Anderson 2008); two articles (Nordin 2008, Vierkant 2008) specifically treat the
use of metaphor in football commentary, although not with regard to English. There are also articles on
English loanwords in various languages (e.g. Pintarić 2008, on Croatian; Sepęk 2008, on Polish). Dosev
(2008:63), discussing Bulgarian, points out that “in most European languages” such loans “are the most
characteristic way of providing football-specific lexis”; cf. Bergh & Ohlander (2012). It should be noted
that the majority of the contributions in Lavric et al. (2008) are focused on other languages than English.
It might be thought, in view of its obvious social dimensions, that football should have left, more or less,
an “open goal” for a wide variety of sociolinguistic research. This, however, hardly seems to have been
the case, as noted by Gerhardt (2011):

To summarize, the general impression is that, from a linguistic point of view, football may be regarded
as an under-researched but potentially rewarding field of inquiry, largely uncharted territory in need of
further exploration. This applies to football language in general, in a global perspective, but also to
English football language. In a way, this can be seen as a paradoxical state of affairs, given the history of
the game and the role of English as a source of inspiration and supplier of loanwords to football
languages around the world.

5
The language of TV soccer commentary

Of all subvarieties in question, TV soccer commentary is probably best known to the public at large as
even non-fans of football have been exposed to this talk. As is the case with TV sports commentary in
many other sports disciplines, this genre is characterized by two kinds of talk: ‘play-by-play description’
and ‘color commentary’.‘Play-by-play description focuses on the action, as opposed to colour
commentary which refers to the more discursive and leisurely speech with which commentators fill in
the quite long spaces between spurts of action’ (Holmes 2001: 247). These days,TV soccer commentary
often involves two people: a professional commentator who gives a detailed live account of the action
on the field and an expert (e.g., a coach or a former player), whose job is to summarize and reflect on
the game events. It would be difficult to generalize about the style of commentary as it may vary
considerably depending on the commentators’ educational background and situational factors. Here is a
short transcript of professional commentator talk (for the sake of comparison we will later see how the
very same event from the NPL match between Eyimba of Aba and Kano Pillars and the UEFA Champions
League 2018 match between As Roma-Barcelona was described in other media):

Free kick to Eyimba ... Ifeanyi and Nnamdi being supported over on the edge of the penalty area by
Uche. Now, Agbi goes to join them. Ifeanyi trots up from left back. Uche coming in near post. Nnamdi
GOAL FOR Eyimba, OH AND ONE FROM IFEANYI THE MAN FOR THE BIG OCCASION.

(Joel 2006: 109)

"Roma have risen from their ruins! Manolas, the Greek God in Rome! The unthinkable unfolds before
our eyes!

"This was not meant to happen. This could not happen. This IS happening. It's a Greek from Mount
Olympus who has come to the seven hills of Rome and pulled off a miracle!" (Peter Drury UCL 2018).

The language of radio soccer commentary

Radio soccer talk exhibits some features similar to the language of TV commen-tary. However, there is
one obvious difference: namely, its recipients (or listeners) canonly be exposed to audio stimuli (Tworek
2000: 336), which definitely has an influence on language use as the amount of information to be
conveyed is considerablyhigher than in TV commentary (naturally, the pace of speech has to be faster).
Let us illustrate this with an extract from a radio commentary referring to the match event mentioned in
the previous section.

6
Free kick to England. Beckham to take it. Five yards in from the right touch line Gary Neville’s theretoo
(.) er has a word with Beckham. Ince has moved forward so too has Phil Neville on the far side.So five
players in attacking positions for England. Beckham swerves it in. Owen goes to meet itchance for
SHEARER SHEARER SCORES ALAN SHEARER SCORES FOR THE FIRST TIMEIN EIGHT GAMES. A CROSS
DELIVERED BY BECKHAM BEAT ALL THE ATTACKERSAPART FROM ALAN SHEARER ONE THAT SHOWS
CRITICS LIKE ME SHEARER SCORESFOR ENGLAND SEVEN MINUTES INTO THE SECOND HALF IT’S
ENGLAND ONE GERMANY NIL (Tolson 2006:109)

Football Clichés
Football’s surprisingly-subtle relationship with grammar bears curious fruit. While the animal
world enjoys an innumerable complement of collective nouns, ranging from the wonderfully
alliterative to the impenetrably obscure, you may not be surprised to learn that football has
quite a few of its own. For reasons of sensationalism, laziness, inaccuracy or simply diversity,
football coverage has demanded that a selection of collective nouns be made available, to be
drawn from whenever appropriate. The list covers all aspects of the game and leaves us in no
doubt (despite the lack of cold, hard numbers) of how one should pluralise the subjects in
question:

‘Raft of substitutions’
“The sole domain of largely-meaningless international friendlies, where the second half
becomes fragmented by the experimentation of both coaches as they seek to give debuts to
their one-cap wonders. Such games have a tendency to peter out until someone finally,
inevitably, asks: “What have we learned?”

‘Host of opportunities’
“Hosts tend to be fairly undesirable collections of missed opportunities, or absentees from the
first team.

‘Hatful of chances’
“A more flamboyant exaggeration, used to ridicule the striker that has missed these chances,
some of which may have been gilt-edged. This represents one of the more imprecise units of
measurement in football, as there seems to be no official confirmation of the volume of an
average hat. Confusingly, though, while the misfiring hitman can fill a hat with squandered
opportunities, he can also successfully score a ‘hatful‘. Or, indeed, ‘fill his boots‘.

‘String of chances’
“Chances may arrive in strings, as can a goalkeeper’s saves or a player’s impressive
performances. Deviating slightly from the grammatical theme, teams will also aim to ‘string’
some wins together or, at the very least, two or three passes.

7
 ‘Run of victories’
“Similar to a ‘string of wins’, but tends to be more smoothly and less desperately put together
and, therefore, more suited to a march towards the title rather than a Great Escape from
relegation.

‘Flurry of yellow cards“

Card-happy referees can sometimes end a barren first half-hour or so by unleashing a ‘flurry
of yellow cards’ in quick succession. They will seek to justify this sudden outburst of disciplinarianism
by pointing out various areas of the pitch to bemused perpetrators of persistent fouling.

‘Array of talent’
“Most commonly found at major tournaments or on expensively-assembled substitute
benches, but can also arrive on a club’s youthful conveyor belt. The elite clubs, however, often
boast a ‘galaxy of stars’.

‘Mass of bodies’
“Generally located somewhere in the midst of an almighty penalty-area scramble, a ‘mass of
bodies’ can be the reason for a statuesque goalkeeper being unsighted, as a strike from all of
30 yards flies through a forest of legs and into the net. Elsewhere on the pitch, high-pressing
teams coordinate their considerable efforts to form a ‘swarm of [insert colour here] shirts’ to
win back precious possession.

‘Embarrassment of riches’
“To further emphasise the options a manager has at his disposal, the international caps and
transfer fees of his substitutes are gleefully totted up to illustrate his ‘embarrassment of
riches’, often (rather aptly) while they are being humbled by a side who were assembled for
the price of a four-bedroom house.

‘Glut of goals’
“A goal glut can occur in a specific competition, particularly a weekend of league fixtures in a
single division. We will be excitedly told how many goals flew in during the 10 or so matches,
leaving us to do the maths ourselves to decide if that is actually impressive or not.

‘Catalogue of errors’
“The helpful football media dutifully compile these to shame hapless individual players at a
later date. Alternatively, unfortunate players may wish to browse their catalogue of injuries
after they’ve been forced to hang up their boots. It’s not just disappointments that are
figuratively documented, though – scorers of great goals invariably have a scrapbook to keep
them in.

8
‘Series of high-profile gaffes’
“A more focused and specific offshoot of the ‘catalogue of errors’, a ‘series of high-profile
gaffes’ tends to be more easily attributed to goalkeepers. The ‘series of high-profile gaffes’
becomes so because Sky Sports News insist on endlessly looping footage of its contents.
“Footballers love to be in the headlines, unless it’s for all the wrong reasons. In an era when
pretty much anything players do, on or off the pitch, is liable to be shoehorned into a red-top
or internet headline, the football media has developed a set of space-saving keywords (mostly
of no more than three to five letters) that account for any incident:

‘Ace’
“Where better to start than with the ace? Despite its elite connotations, ‘aceness‘ is a
conveniently fluid concept in the world of newspaper headlines. ‘Premier League’ youth-
teamers convicted of driving offences — or ‘League Two’ players caught in compromising
situations in hotels — qualify as ‘aces’ on the basis of sensationalism alone, to the point
where using the word to describe those genuinely at the pinnacle of the game seems woefully
insufficient.

‘Axe’
“The most excruciating wait to be put out of one’s misery is when a beleaguered manager (or
boss, for these purposes) ‘faces the axe’. In the interests of pedantry, it should be emphasised
that managers are never ultimately hit by the axe, they are simply ‘axed‘. It can also be used
to describe players being dropped from the squad – not only are they ‘axed‘, but they are also
‘frozen out‘. It’s a cruel world.

‘Bid’
“Normally associated with proposed transfer deals, ‘bid’ can also appear as a synonym for a
team’s efforts to achieve a season-long goal (such as the league title), but without quite the
focused determination of a ‘vow‘.

‘Blast’
“A vitriolic burst of criticism, with various possible sources or targets – often a poor,
defenceless referee.

‘Blow’
“A disappointing event, invariably associated with injuries. The ‘hammer blow’, however, is
exclusive to title bids.

‘Boost’
“The polar opposite of a ‘blow’.

‘Coy’

9
“Tight-lipped” managers remain ‘coy’ when asked about new signings – talking about players
at other clubs (like talking about referees) is something managers go out of their way to say
they don’t do, while still actually doing it, anyway.

‘Dent’
“A type of ‘blow’, but one that only affects a ‘bid’ or someone’s hopes, and rarely terminal
(unlike, say, a ‘hammer blow’ or a ‘derailing’).

‘Eye’
“’Eyeing‘ is the more voyeuristic equivalent of keeping tabs on a player, before mulling over a
‘bid’.

‘Exit’
“The departure from a cup competition. If the circumstances are calamitous enough, clubs can
also ‘crash out’ of a cup, or even be unceremoniously ‘dumped out’. Any of which may usher
their manager towards the exit door.

‘Faces’
“After a controversial incident, but before its punishment is meted out, the accused player or
club (or soon-to-be-axed manager) will be held in the purgatory of simply facing their fate.

‘Hails’
“Victorious managers feel compelled to ‘hail’ a collective or individual performance, or the
vocal support of the (no doubt-magnificent) fans.

‘Held’
“Form-book defying stalemates usually involve a frustrated side being ‘held’. Sufficiently
vague for use with any type of draw, regardless of who scored first or if it was a 0-0 stalemate.

‘Hit’
“After facing an FA probe and taking the subsequent rap, the miscreant can then be ‘hit’ with
a fine (or, indeed, ‘slapped’ with a ban). Also used as shorthand for impressive goalscoring
feats (‘Ronaldo hits four in Real rout’) or specifically sized capitulations (‘Droylsden hit for
six’).

‘Jibe’
“The traditionally-sneaky opening move in a bout of mind games, which can escalate to a ‘war
of words’.

‘Joy’
“Exploiting its diminutive stature to the full, ‘joy’ is the weapon of choice to describe a
manager’s/player’s happiness.

10
‘Probe’
“The expected preliminary investigations of the FA (or, in more extreme cases, the police)
which are invariably ‘faced’ before they are launched.

‘Raid’
“The act of managers returning to recent former employers to cherry-pick their favourite
players, ideally in one single deal. Suggests a certain cynicism from the bidding club, and a
level of helplessness on the part of the seller.

‘Rap’
“A cult favourite, this diminutive word is far catchier than ‘disciplinary proceedings’. An FA
probe inevitably leads to an FA ‘rap’, two headline-friendly terms that cannot help but conjure
up images rather different to their intended meaning. Such disciplinary proceedings attempt
to bring closure to an ongoing row of some sort, be it a mere war of words or a full-blown, I’d-
rather-be-punched-in-the-face spit-spat. Even the most serious issues, such as race rows, are
effectively trivialised for the purposes of alliteration.

‘Seal’
“The rubber-stamping of a transfer deal (protracted or otherwise) or the relatively untroubled
progression of a club to the next round of a cup competition.

‘Set for’
“Similar to facing something, but without the ominous threat, clubs tend to be ‘set for’ cup
draws, while players patiently find themselves ‘set’ for a move elsewhere.

‘Sorry’
“The equivalent of ‘beleaguered’ for clubs who have capitulated and been very heavily
defeated.

‘Stun’
“Late or unexpected winning goals have the tendency to ‘stun’, particularly if Goliath ever
faces a tricky trip to face David in the FA Cup.

‘Switch’
“A swiftly completed move, unfettered by any prolonged haggling or red tape.

‘Swoop’
“Similar to a raid, if rather less exciting and more smoothly completed, it again refers to a
bigger club signing a player from a smaller club. These can often be bulk purchases, neatly
described as double or triple ‘swoops’.

11
‘Vow’
“Nobody in football promises to do anything, they always ‘vow’ – silencing the boo-boys is a
common vow, as is a player’s repaying of a manager’s faith.

FOOTBALL REGISTERS
Breakaway
a sudden attack, esp from a defensive position, in football, hockey, etc
cap
an emblematic hat or beret given to someone chosen for a representative team
catenaccio
an extremely defensive style of play
centre circle
centre forward
the central forward in the attack
centre half
a defender who plays in the middle of the defence
clearance
the act of hitting or kicking a ball out of the defensive area, as in football
cross
the act or an instance of kicking or passing the ball from a wing to the middle of the field
crossbar or bar
a horizontal beam across a pair of goalposts
corner (kick)
a free kick taken from the corner of the field after the defending side has played the ball
behind their own goal line
cut out
to intercept (a pass)
defender
a player whose main task is to try and stop the other side scoring
derby
a football match between two teams from the same area
direct free kick
a free kick awarded to a team as the result of a foul by an opposing player and from which a
goal can be scored directly, without the ball being touched by another player
dribble
to propel (the ball) by repeatedly tapping it with the foot
dummy
a feigned pass or move in a sport such as football or rugby
extra time
an additional period played at the end of a match, to compensate for time lost through injury
or (in certain circumstances) to allow the teams to achieve a conclusive result
FA

12
 Football Association
FIFA
Fédération Internationale de Football Association: the international governing body of
association football
finishing
the act or skill of goal scoring
forward
an attacking player in any of various sports, such as soccer, hockey, or basketball
foul
a violation of the rules
free kick

a place kick awarded for a foul or infringement, either direct, from which a goal may be scored, or
indirect, from which the ball must be touched by at least one other player for a goal to be allowed

fullback
one of two defensive players positioned in front of the goalkeeper
full time
the end of a football or other match
goal
(in various sports) the net, basket, etc, into or over which players try to propel the ball, puck,
etc, to score

goal area or six-yard box

a rectangular area to the sides and front of the goal, measuring 20 × 6 yards on a full-sized
pitch, from which goal kicks are taken.
Conclusion
It has been the aim of the preceding sections to demonstrate that just as football is in many
ways a remarkable public phenomenon in its own right, now in its third century, so indeed is the
language of the game. As argued here, football language may be characterized as a special
language with a public face with its tone appealing to the audiences curiosity. The specialness of
football language is apparent in literally thousands of facts and features, lexical and
grammatical, that set it apart from general language. Consequently, a sentence like 'The striker
was awarded a last-minute penalty but failed to convert' is virtually incomprehensible from a
strictly general-language point of view, i.e. to speakers of English with no, or insufficient,
knowledge of football and its language. Not only does it contain special terms like 'striker',
'penalty' and 'convert'; it also deviates from normal collocational and grammatical patterns, with
regard to the verb 'award' in relation to 'penalty' as well as the use of the verb 'convert' without
an object or other complement. The same general point is illustrated by sentences like 'A heavy
first touch let the goalkeeper gather and Van Persie curled narrowly wide'.
At the same time, however, due to football’s public nature, the interface between special
language and general language is quite possibly more extensive as regards football language

13
than other special languages. For this reason, as insisted throughout this paper, football
language as a field of linguistic inquiry should warrant considerably more scholarly attention
than it has so far received.
References
Al-Kasimi, M. (1983), Linguistics and Bilingual Dictionaries. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Anderson, D.(1994), Contemporary Sports Reporting. Second ed. Chicago:
Nelson–Hall, A . (2001), Trepoängare, trunkbärare och trävirke. Utvecklingen av fotbollens
terminologi från 1960-talet till år 2000. Göteborg: Göteborgs universitet.
Andersson, T.(2002), Kung fotboll: den svenska fotbollens kulturhistoria från 1800-talets slut.
Höör: Symposion.
Andersson, T (2011), “Spela fotboll bondjävlar!” En studie av svensk klubbkultur och lokal
identitet från 1950 till 2000-talets början. Höör: Symposion.
Atkins, Sue & Michael Rundell (2008), The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography.Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
BBC Learning English – Vocabulary, Football (2010), Available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/vocabulary/football.shtml
(accessed July 6, 2010).Beard, Adrian (1998), The Language of Sport.London.Routledge.

Bergenholtz, H & Sven T. (1995), Manual of Specialised Lexicography: The Preparation of

Specialised Dictionaries. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Bergh, G. (2011), “Football is war: A case study of minute-by-minute football commentary”,

Veredas (Brazil) 15:83–93.

Bergh, G. & Sölve. (2012), “English direct loans in European football lexis”, in Pulcini, Virginia,
Félix Rodríguez González & Cristiano Furiassi (eds.), The Anglicization of European Lexis.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 281-304.Bergh, Gunnar & Sölve Ohlander. Forthcoming. “English
loan translations in European football lexis.”

Bernard, Mélanie, (2008), “Football in France. Its history, vocabulary and place within French
society”, in Lavric et al., 71–79.Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech,
Susan C.& Edward F.(1999), Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Harlow:
Longman.

Burkhardt, A.(2006), Wörterbuch der Fußballsprache. Göttingen: Verlag die Werkstatt.

Cambridge Air and Space Dictionary (1990), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Carter, Ronald & Michael McCarthy (2006), Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Chapanga, E.(2004), “An analysis of the war metaphors used in spoken commentaries of the
2004 edition of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) matches in Zimbabwe.” Zambesia 31:62–79.

14
Chovanec, J. (2008), “Enacting an imaginary community: Infotainment in on-line minute-by-
minute sports commentaries”, in Lavric et al., 255–268.

COED = The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English. First ed. 1911; reprinted 2011.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.

COED = Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2011), Twelfth ed. of COD. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Cowie, P. (1999), English Dictionaries for Foreign Learners. A History. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Cowie, Anthony P. & Ronald M. (1985), Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic

15