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The semantics of winning and losing1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Michael K. Smith  and
Michael B. Montgomery
Michael K. Smith
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Michael B. Montgomery
Affiliation:
Department of English, University of South Carolina
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Abstract

Headlines reporting the outcomes of professional and college football games for an entire football season from two major newspapers were analyzed in an attempt to answer three questions: (1) What kind(s) of language do sportswriters use in attempting to be playful or humorous? (2) Is there a pattern to the number of ways winning and losing can be described? (3) What effects might creative use of language in such headlines have on the English language in general? Of the 930 headlines collected, there were 222 different transitive verbs (e.g., ambush, batter, burn, flog, maul, smash) and 81 intransitive verbs (e.g., breeze, cruise, lose, rally, win). On a descriptive linguistic level, most headlines (a) were in the form of subject–verb–object; (b) used alliteration and punning (Rice Burns Baylor); and (c) used almost any action verb to denote winning. On a psycholinguistic level, an argument is presented for semantic generativity, the ability of the context and the metaphorical possibilities of words to have almost any verb make sense in a headline. Finally, on a historical linguistic level, it is suggested that continued use of a verb for winning and losing (such as maul and pulverize) may lead to a change in their meaning. (Semantics, language change, language of sports)

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 31 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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