Language in sports

   Sports have an important role in American Culture. The most important and widespread sports in the United States are basketball, American football, ice hockey and baseball. American history is relatively short, so most of population feels proud of their sportmen and takes very seriously the competitions and matches. 

   In team sports, it is very important the use of language, spoken language as well as body language. Coaches need to create and invent tactics of game, models of actuation depending on the weather, capacities of the players and techniques of the rival, that is why language is a very useful tool in order to create tactics. When players are in the middle of the game it is very productive marking every move with a particular name, previously practiced in the trainings and memorized by the players. This could be considered as a CODE LANGUAGE in sports, which are very used for example in sports such as basketball or handball, where the tactics are very important.

   However, there are other team sports where certain tactics are not required but where language is a tool for encouraging sportmen to do the best they can, for example with phrases or statements which both coaches and players share and which have a special meaning for them. Examples of these sports may be tennis, athletics, swimming and other individual sports. Some of these statements sometimes are made a slogan of sport brands like 'Adidas' and its acknown slogan "Imposible is nothing" or 'Nike' "Just do it". Other times, for example, language has a function much more irrelevant at first sight, but that however, later, we realize that it has marked an important role in the life of many players. It is then when we notice that 'Magic Johnson' might be a normal nickname for someone, but however it has been, is and will be the name of Earvin Effay Johnson, Jr. (which surely no-one knows as such), who made of his spectacular technique in basketball a myth for everyone who loves this sport. Another known legend of American sport, in this case baseball's player, was Denton True Young or perhaps more known as 'Cy the Cyclone', a nickname which lasts even more than fifty years after his death, and which is due to he was the first baseball's player in doing a complete game, avoiding to any player to reach a base. (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cy_Young)

    And the point is that even though we don't notice, language in a way or in another has a significant meaning in the world of sports from simple names for tactics between teammates to special players whose nicknames (from a special association of their real names and some words) will 'survive' forever and with them, their legend.


Example of "Maradona" move. This is a great example of how professionals name certain moves with particular names in order to everybody knows them.

By: Estefanía Benítez Sánchez