.
| Hearsay: |
For those of us who love language as well as hockey, the Stanley Cup playoffs bring a tricky question: Can we overlook the rampant abuse of words that goes on every spring?
I’m not talking about how foreign-born players mangle English (or, occasionally, French). Alex Kovalev’s English is far better than my Russian. I’m talking about broadcasters who are paid serious amounts of money, not just for their knowledge of the sport, but for their ability to talk.
Pierre McGuire, for instance. As a former coach, he has a keen eye for the contributions that coaches make during a game. On TSN last week, he got so excited about a decision by the coach of the Colorado Avalanche that he blurted out: “Joel Quenneville impacted this game huge!”
I’m not thrilled about the growth of “impact” as a verb, but I suspect it’s here to stay. My real issue with McGuire is his use of the adjective “huge” as though it were an adverb.
Sports commentators in general seem less and less willing to give an adverb its customary “-ly” ending. Is it felt to sound too effete, too unmanly? Maybe the teenage boys and young men who form the core audience for hockey telecasts prefer words that rush at them like a series of punches. Or maybe that’s just what the broadcasters think.
January 2006
December
2005
November
2005
October
2005
September
2005
August
2005
July
2005
June
2005
May
2005
April
2005
March
2005
February
2005
January
2005
December
2004
November
2004
October
2004
September
2004
August
2004
July
2004
June
2004
May
2004
April
2004
March
2004
February
2004
January
2004
December
2003
November
2003
October
2003
September
2003
August
2003
Bookninja © Copyright
The opinions expressed on this site are those of individual participants
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the site owners,
organizers, or other participants.
[powered by WordPress.]
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:54 am
Satire really is tough, isn’t it?
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I don’t watch sports on TV nearly as much as I used to, but here’s another regular linguistic gaffe that still gets to me: using a generic pronoun in a sentence, followed by the proper name of the subject, as in: “He’s really taken over this game, Denis Savard.” (And no, the speaker is NOT directing his comment toward Savard.) As if using the proper name afterward at all corrects the error of not using it in the first place.
Oh, and also the use of “very key”, as in “For the Pistons tonight, shutting down the Raptors’ fast break will be very key.”
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Abley says, “I don’t mean to suggest that hockey analysts (there’s another odd compound) should sound like poets…”
I think the really good ones do occasionally hit a good metaphor. Harry Neale always makes me chuckle with his inventive memtaphors.
What irks me the most while watching hockey is the use of cliches. There are very few player interviews that aren’t a mish-mash of
cliches.
This was an intersting article; thanks for posting it. I only wish it was longer. That would have been huge!
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I think the language of sportscasters probably has something to do my antipathy for professional sports. I hate watching sports coverage on the news because sportscasters not only abuse the language like this article suggests, but they have their own, highly annoying argot that seems to consist of endless slang synonyms for everything. Why say “he gets the dinger” or “he dailed 9″ when you can say “he hit a home run”? It’s just nails on a chalkboard to me. Joe Tilly here in Toronto (CTV News) is one of the worst for that. I don’t think he ever uses the actual word for anything, just slang.
But then someone invariably interviews one of the athletes, and it just gets worse. They talk bad huge.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
You think that’s bad? You should listen to this “rap music” kids these days are listening to! More like Rap Crap, I always say!
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:28 am
Why should we all sound the same? I like “Joel Quenneville impacted this game huge!” I can almost feel its sweaty muscles. I’m glad that sports commentators aren’t afraid to swagger about in the language. “Joel Quenneville had a huge impact on this game”? Where’s the locker room in that?
April 24th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
“Gets a dinger”? Pauly, you sound like Mickey Rooney. No one ever says “gets a dinger.” To borrow a bit of basketballese, you threw up a brick, dude.
I’m with Alex. Slang and ungrammatical constructions in sports commentary are, if not good for language as a vehicle of dramatic expression, at least harmless. If you had to say “hit a homerun” ten times a minute, you’d be searching for new metaphors too.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
You’d be needing to look for a new pitcher as well as new metaphors in that case.
April 25th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Was thinkin’ more highlight reel than play-by-play…