Cutting the Russian Bear down to size on the graveyard of champions

An analysis of the metaphors used in the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film

Abstract

Sports reports on the radio, on television, or in newspapers are usually characterized by very vivid language full of metaphorical terms and expressions. After an introduction to the most prominent metaphor theories, this paper focuses on an analysis of metaphor usage in an English tennis report. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the spoken commentary of the 2002 Official Wimbledon Film, the aim of this paper is to establish how many and what kind of metaphors are typically used in this film, to which image donor fields the different metaphors belong, and how certain metaphors interact with each other within the commentary.