The 6th Congress of Exercise and Sport Sciences

Sports Metaphors in the Economic Press in Israel

Oren Zonder
The Academic College at Wingate, Netanya, Israel

In modern society the economic press is part of the economic system. Researching metaphors in economic language can help expose common thinking among economic discourse participants, as well as criticize this discourse at a specific place and time. In this lecture I will present a study that reveals the main metaphors used in the economic press in Israel and their sources. The lecture will focus on one of the categories found in economic language: leisure metaphors, including sports metaphors. I will also address motion metaphors as part of sports metaphors.

The sports metaphors found in Corpus are divided into four areas: competition, record, players and effort. The most common metaphor is the competition metaphor. Competition is an important economic issue, which is important to boost and encourage in the economic world. Economic discourse in Israel reflects the perception that opening the Israeli economy to competition or removing competition barriers is considered to be an important factor in a developed economic market.

The metaphors found in the corpus of the economic press have been sorted according to their sources and to the degree of their lexicalization. In terms of the level of the lexicalization, three categories were defined: lexicalized metaphors, conventional metaphors, and media metaphors.

The more often a metaphor is used, the more it becomes frozen or lexicalized (e.g., price competition, a peak in tax collection).

On the other hand, we find in the corpus communicative metaphors according to the model presented by Lykoff and Turner (2009). These metaphors are “alive”, and are therefore suitable for reporting about economic events (e.g., the company is running from investment to investment).

In addition, in between those two extremes are the conventional metaphors, which are often used and are common in the language but have not yet been lexicalized and remain alive (e.g., Don`t play games with me).

Compared to the use of sports metaphors in the political press in Israel (Zonder, 2018), the use of sports metaphors in the Israeli economy press is relatively low, However, in American English, which greatly influences the economic language, sports metaphors are widely used, especially team sports metaphors (McCluskey, 1995). Therefore, the absence of many metaphors from this area in the current corpus is surprising.

The research is part of a doctoral dissertation written under Professor Zohar Livnat`s supervision.

Oren Zonder
Oren Zonder








Powered by Eventact EMS