Cliches in Sport
- Submitted by: LukeZB99
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- Category: English
- Date Submitted: 06/13/2016 12:39 PM
- Pages: 4
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Why are there so many clichés in football?
Every football fan would probably say that they're fluent in the "language of football". From the pragmatics of it, knowing that, in a footballing context, a brace is neither a device fitted to something to provide support or a pair of straps that pass over the shoulders and fasten to the top of trousers at the front and back to hold them up, to knowing the names of all the high potential, young gems that you've ever found on all the popular football management games you've ever played, football is a very broad and hard language to learn.
One of the staples of the football language is the cliché. A phrase that is do overused that it loses its original impact, they're are hundreds of these phrases that are usually peppered in the post match interviews of players and managers and the commentaries of former players as former managers. A big question of those who are not fluent in the language of football is "what do all these clichés mean?" and "why are they used so often?"
Some clichés are blatantly obvious, for example "A game of two halves" describes the structure of a football match perfectly, it has two sections of 45 minutes each (both sections are equal therefore they are "halves"). The cliché isn't meant to be a description of the structure of a game though, because a match can really have two juxtaposing halves, therefore a usage for the cliché. A great example of this is the 2005 Champions League final between AC Milan and Liverpool (which itself have become so overused to demonstrate so many different things that it could be a cliché as well), where AC Milan scored 3 times in the first half and Liverpool managed to score 3 in the second half to level the game. The Reds went on to win on penalties. There are so many other examples of this and everyone has there own "game of two halves". One of the people I was talking to about this had his own, more recent, example. "It really was a game of two halves" he...
Every football fan would probably say that they're fluent in the "language of football". From the pragmatics of it, knowing that, in a footballing context, a brace is neither a device fitted to something to provide support or a pair of straps that pass over the shoulders and fasten to the top of trousers at the front and back to hold them up, to knowing the names of all the high potential, young gems that you've ever found on all the popular football management games you've ever played, football is a very broad and hard language to learn.
One of the staples of the football language is the cliché. A phrase that is do overused that it loses its original impact, they're are hundreds of these phrases that are usually peppered in the post match interviews of players and managers and the commentaries of former players as former managers. A big question of those who are not fluent in the language of football is "what do all these clichés mean?" and "why are they used so often?"
Some clichés are blatantly obvious, for example "A game of two halves" describes the structure of a football match perfectly, it has two sections of 45 minutes each (both sections are equal therefore they are "halves"). The cliché isn't meant to be a description of the structure of a game though, because a match can really have two juxtaposing halves, therefore a usage for the cliché. A great example of this is the 2005 Champions League final between AC Milan and Liverpool (which itself have become so overused to demonstrate so many different things that it could be a cliché as well), where AC Milan scored 3 times in the first half and Liverpool managed to score 3 in the second half to level the game. The Reds went on to win on penalties. There are so many other examples of this and everyone has there own "game of two halves". One of the people I was talking to about this had his own, more recent, example. "It really was a game of two halves" he...