Popis: |
Sport is a global social phenomenon. The multitude of sports originating from all parts of the world combine to produce a construct comprised of multifarious culture-bound concepts – from language, to codified systems and traditions, to rules of competition, etc. The thus emanating construct tries to promote the globally accepted concepts, characteristics and modes of behaviour that amalgamate to a philosophy of life. The enterprise attempting to promote this way of life is the Olympic Movement, manifested in the ultimate global mega sporting event – the Olympic Games. Consequently, the aim of our research was to analyse a set of promotional booklets – published by the International Olympic Committee and host cities of the Olympic Games – as one of the instruments used to promote the values and ideals of Olympism through the Olympic Games. These publications were analysed in terms of structure, style, content and intended audience (cf. Swales, 1990, p. 58) of the texts, as well as in terms of their linguistic features – lexis, syntax and style. Both the wide and specialised public of the Olympic Games form a discourse community that is the intended audience of the analysed booklets as a communicative event (cf. Bhatia, 2002 ; Swales, 1990, p. 39). Since genre is, like sport, conceptualized to be a social phenomenon, the interaction between them will be in focus. Ultimately, the results are expected to yield information on whether such booklets could be considered a genre. |