Page 359 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 359
the cowboys, the poets, the professor...
– antonomasia in croatian sports discourse 359
F.C.) and Pjesnici = the Poets (Zagreb F.C.). In the first case, the an-
tonomasia’s source is a famous mythological story about Rome’s found-
ers Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf which nursed the abandoned
twins. The reference point for this metonymic antonomasia was there-
fore directly connected to the home town and not to the football club it-
self. The source of the second antonomasia, Pjesnici, is much more com-
plex. The Zagreb F. C. stadium is situated in Kranjčevićeva Street, Silvije
Strahimir Kranjčević being a famous Croatian 19th century poet. There-
fore, Zagreb’s players are the Poets. The reference point in this case could
be described as double-shifted from the target domain.
3.3. Antonomasia in Written and in Spoken Sports Discourse
The third question, the difference in the use of antonomasia in writ-
ten and in spoken sports discourse, was the most difficult to answer. In
our corpus of 640 examples only 34 (around 5 %) were collected from
TV news. There are several reasons for this disproportion, but we are
aware that the basic one is the fact that written and spoken sports dis-
course was not equally represented in our research. There was no spoken
counterpart for the written articles in the specialized newspapers and
magazines and that is the reason why we had so many more examples
from written sports discourse. Nevertheless, when we compared daily
newspapers sports articles and TV sports news about the same topic (for
instance, the outcome of a handball match), in most cases there was not
a single example of antonomasia in the TV sports news. Quite the con-
trary, in almost every written article antonomasia was used at least once
to substitute a particular name. We were compelled to make a qualita-
tive comparison between the two media since there was no ground for
quantitative analysis.
In our opinion, the most important reason for a low frequency of
antonomasia in spoken articles is a general difference between the two
media. The visual stimulus in TV news requires less linguistic material
– we simply see what is/was happening. This makes the use of tropes re-
dundant because sports subjects do not need to be verbalized as often as
in written discourse (TV news also benefits from name captions which
are, for instance, shown when an athlete is giving a press statement).
The other reason is the amount of text in written and in spoken dis-
course. The sports news program on Croatian TV channels usually lasts
up to 5 minutes (including four reports at least) and it usually provides
basic information (the time and place of the event, participants, score
– antonomasia in croatian sports discourse 359
F.C.) and Pjesnici = the Poets (Zagreb F.C.). In the first case, the an-
tonomasia’s source is a famous mythological story about Rome’s found-
ers Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf which nursed the abandoned
twins. The reference point for this metonymic antonomasia was there-
fore directly connected to the home town and not to the football club it-
self. The source of the second antonomasia, Pjesnici, is much more com-
plex. The Zagreb F. C. stadium is situated in Kranjčevićeva Street, Silvije
Strahimir Kranjčević being a famous Croatian 19th century poet. There-
fore, Zagreb’s players are the Poets. The reference point in this case could
be described as double-shifted from the target domain.
3.3. Antonomasia in Written and in Spoken Sports Discourse
The third question, the difference in the use of antonomasia in writ-
ten and in spoken sports discourse, was the most difficult to answer. In
our corpus of 640 examples only 34 (around 5 %) were collected from
TV news. There are several reasons for this disproportion, but we are
aware that the basic one is the fact that written and spoken sports dis-
course was not equally represented in our research. There was no spoken
counterpart for the written articles in the specialized newspapers and
magazines and that is the reason why we had so many more examples
from written sports discourse. Nevertheless, when we compared daily
newspapers sports articles and TV sports news about the same topic (for
instance, the outcome of a handball match), in most cases there was not
a single example of antonomasia in the TV sports news. Quite the con-
trary, in almost every written article antonomasia was used at least once
to substitute a particular name. We were compelled to make a qualita-
tive comparison between the two media since there was no ground for
quantitative analysis.
In our opinion, the most important reason for a low frequency of
antonomasia in spoken articles is a general difference between the two
media. The visual stimulus in TV news requires less linguistic material
– we simply see what is/was happening. This makes the use of tropes re-
dundant because sports subjects do not need to be verbalized as often as
in written discourse (TV news also benefits from name captions which
are, for instance, shown when an athlete is giving a press statement).
The other reason is the amount of text in written and in spoken dis-
course. The sports news program on Croatian TV channels usually lasts
up to 5 minutes (including four reports at least) and it usually provides
basic information (the time and place of the event, participants, score
