Football Lexicon: A Dictionary of Usage in Football Journalism and Commentary - Hardcover

Leigh, John; Woodhouse, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0906672791 ISBN 13: 9780906672792

Publisher: Oleander Press, 2004

Synopsis

Football fans love talking, hearing and reading about football. A whole industry, ranging from the sports pages of newspapers and match programmes to radio phone-ins and websites, caters for this need every day of the week. Leigh & Woodhouse's Football Lexicon is the new indispensable dictionary for fans everywhere, enabling them both to understand and participate fully in this football language. All sports have their own jargon but none is so great as the language of football. Of all sports, football arouses the blindest loves and the bitterest hatreds. Football commentators, reporters, players and managers have developed a way of speaking to express these deep emotions. The sheer quantity of matches and the pace at which football is played also necessitate a formulaic quality in talking about football. These are not mere clichés, but a useful shorthand for the reader or listener. When you hear there has been 'handbags at Highbury' you need to know that handbags (or sometimes handbags at ten paces) means the players have been fighting on the pitch. Running commentary has become so integral to our experience of football that you hear children playing in schoolyards supply their own commentary as they dribble, shoot and foul. Computer football games, even as they indulge the fantasy that you are a footballer, provide a commentary in the language of your choice. For all the talk of a visual age, television coverage of football has made the experience of football ever more verbal. Footballers such as David Beckham move in a different orbit from most of us. But just as they have disappeared behind tinted windows and electronic gates, they have become more familiar to us than ever, through written and oral interviews. The contrast between the facility with which these stars express themselves on the pitch and their inarticulacy off it can be a source of embarrassment and humour. Language to these footballers is like tarmac to their studs. It is a case of Robbie Fowler’s modern English usage.

About this title

Review:

'absolutely brilliant' -- Adrian Chiles, The Independent, October 9, 2004

'reminds the reader just how ubiquitous and comical some of the game's common jargon really is' -- Tom Dart, The Times, October 18, 2004

A joy to read -- Christiopher South, Cambridge Evening News, October 22, 2004

Absolutely brilliant -- Adrian Chiles, The Independent, October 9, 2004

From the Publisher:

Further reviews: "Excellent...Football Lexicon deals only in the finest cliches, those that footballers, commentators and writers use in all seriousness, most of the time without even knowing it." Observer Sport Monthly "A catalogue of cliches, a sort of Robbie Fowler's Modern English Usage...A deliciously wry, witty gem." Time Out "Pleasingly self-mocking...This essential work sharply points out the inherent contradictions in much football speak." Times Literary Supplement "The best thing since Roger's Profanisaurus...[It] knits together the cliched phrases we take for granted like a string of effortless Brazilian passes." Ice Magazine "Sportswriters have always had a language of their own, but this is the first systematic analysis I've seen, and it's sharply observed." Daily Telegraph "Excellent...You will be hard pressed to think of any of football's huge store of more or less viable tropes that they have missed...Leigh & Woodhouse are civilised guides to all that's tritest and best in football parlance." London Review of Books "A wickedly deadpan A-Z of argot...The lads show clinical finishing and give 200 per cent." Boyd Tonkin, Independent (Books of the Year) "Erudite and witty glossary of jargon from 'The Beautiful Game'. Kicks the opposition into 'Row Z'." Mail on Sunday "A witty dictionary of football cliches, for which the authors have a keen ear. They include some shrewd broader analysis that would delight FR Leavis." Sunday Telegraph "The best thing I have EVER read on the relationship between language and football." Christopher T. George, football poet "Leigh & Woodhouse take an admirably detached view of football's language, rarely judging, just simply setting down the unbreakable laws of the commentator's jargon...This small, witty, neatly produced volume would be a nice loo book for any football fan, but there's one group of people who definitely shouldn't be without a copy. All aspiring football commentators must immediately learn the entire lexicon off by heart." Guardian "I could not be less interested in football. But I am very interested in our living language and this Football Lexicon is a joy to read." Cambridge Evening News "Witty and wise glossary of football-speak with definitions supplied by the authors with tongues firmly wedged in cheeks. It would be foolish to assume that it falls into that dread category, 'intentionally humorous sports books', which rarely hit the mark, because it's both genuinely funny and offers an insight into how the game is being made meaningless by its vocabulary." Sports Books Direct "Learned and informative, as well as entertaining." Programme Monthly and Football Collectable

About this edition

• Publisher: Oleander Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0906672791
• ISBN 13: 9780906672792
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 190