A Functional-Stylistic Approach To Journalistic English For Sports

Sports play an important role in social and cultural life of human society. With the development of economy and the enhancement of international communication, sports have been attracting more and more attentions. Many newspapers bear sports edition, hence more and more sports news reporting is released. Journalistic English for sports has its unique features due to its field, mode and tenor of discourse. However, compared with other registers, sports news reporting has not enjoyed its due attentions. No works concerning a systematic and comprehensive analysis of its stylistic features could be found in the linguistic circle.The present thesis is an attempt to analyze the stylistic features of sports news reporting systematically and comprehensively on the basis of the theory of foregrounding as well as other theories of lexicology, semantics, syntax, etc.Functional stylistics holds the view—style as foregrounding. Foregrounding is the opposite of automatization, that is, the de-automatization of an act. Automatization schematizes an event; foregrounding means the violation of the scheme. Readers' attentions can be retained through the foregrounded features of the discourse. Two ways can be used to achieve foregrounding, namely, the intentional departure from the norm of the standard and the overregular use of the norm.Sports news reporting from The Times, The Mirror, The Guardian, The Washington Times, and The 21st Century are collected and analyzed at graphological, phonological, lexical, syntactic and semantic levels. At the graphological level, peculiar use of punctuations, spelling deviation and manipulation of the type of print helps to achieve foregrounding. At the phonological level, foregrounding is fulfilled through the reoccurrence of the identical sound. Nonce-formations, abbreviations, blends and sense-shift attain lexical foregrounding, and the frequent use of the shorts words and numbers also functions. At the syntactic level, foregrounded features are embodied in the frequent use of active voice and quotations, and also the peculiar use of the tenses. Foregrounding at the semantic level principally turns up in the news headlines. It is the use of metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy and pun that helps to bring the potential of the linguistic elements into full play.It is hoped that the present investigation of the stylistic features of the journalistic English for sports sheds light on the teaching of writing and appreciation of sports news reporting.