Zur Funktion der Doping Metapher in der deutschen Alltagssprache

Abstract

Doping became one of the central themes of sport in recent decades. In addition, the lexeme doping has a permanent place in the German language. This article explores its metaphorical use with reference to more than 1,100 newspaper texts of the two German weekly paper Die Zeit and Der Spiegel from 1950 to 2009. Here, the empirical analysis on the one hand is concerned with the linguistic constitution of the doping metaphor and on the other hand with the potential functions of the doping metaphor. The results reveal that the doping metaphor ten ds to have positive connotations. Accordingly, attempts to improve performance are seen positively by society . This contradicts the negative perception of doping in the field of sport.