COMMENT Editorial

Like many pastimes (fashion, cookery and popular This deliberate use of jargon, slang and dialect is music would offer equally rich pickings), sport typical of sports discourse between enthusiasts, and generates a wealth of expressions used enthusias- creates a sense of shared conversation between pre- tically by participants and aficionados that can senter/journalist and viewer/listener/reader. Half are mystify the uninitiated, sometimes intentionally. documented in authoritative dictionaries: OED Cricketing terminology is particular renowned for (online) includes doosra and ,while being impenetrable to outsiders, so the prospect Collins (online) records chin music. Cow corner of the 2015 Ashes series between England and was a favourite of a 1970s school coach, Australia prompts the revisiting of lexical items who viewed the shot with utter contempt, but we particularly related to cricket. have yet to find this or jaffa in print dictionaries. Both, however, warrant entries in Wikipedia’s [Moeen Ali] will be leaving his doosra ‘Glossary of Cricket Terms’, and several online firmly in the locker for the foreseeable future sports outlets offer T-shirts bearing a ‘cow corner’ (Guardian Sport, November 2014) logo. Wikipedia also has an entry for we’re not play- [] sends down an absolute jaffa which ing for sheep stations, and it was also the slogan of a cuts Dilshan in half (BBC online publicity campaign in Australia which sought to pro- live update: New Zealand vs. , February 2015) mote more respectful behaviour among parents and [Martin Guptill’s] massive six to cow corner (Guardian spectators in junior rugby league. Sport, May 2015) The global appeal of sport, the dominance of chin music (Nasser Hussain commentating on Sky English in sporting terminology, the willingness Sports: England vs. New Zealand Lords Test, May 2015) of English to absorb loan words, the enduring there has been a conspicuous absence of sledging (increased?) influence of the Indian subcontinent (Guardian Sport, June 2015) and other varieties of World English, and the role we’re not playing for sheep stations (Jason Gillespie of communities of practice in shaping individual interviewed on Radio Five Live: ‘Tuffers and and shared vernaculars seem to encapsulate the Vaughan Cricket Show’, June 2015) rich variety of linguistic themes typically covered by English Today. This set of six throws up a range of linguistic research enquiries. One is a loan word: doosra [Hindi/Urdu This issue of English Today sees a further item from ‘ ’ for ‘second/other one’] – a ball in cricket which the Bridging the Unbridgeable series on debateable spins away from a right-handed batsman but is deliv- matters of usage, and it also contains the first of ered with a bowling action that suggests the reverse. what we hope might become an occasional series in This and the term sledging – targeted verbal abuse which Simon Elmes considers aspects of broadcasting designed to distract/unnerve an opposition batsman about the English language. Language attitudes con- (once famously described by former Australian cap- cern Tanda and Salakhyan, the former focusing on tain, Steve Waugh, as ‘mental disintegration’) – are the English-based pidgin of Cameroon, the latter on typical of the jargon that inevitably occurs in descrip- native- and non-native-speaker English varieties con- tions designed for a specialist audience. The other sidered by Slavic speakers. English put to use is the four demonstrate how vernacular forms occur even focus of Inagawa in Japan, of Dashti in Kuwait, and in relatively formal sports discourse. Of these not of Awuku in Togo. Like Awuku, whose article con- playing for sheep stations is Australian dialect for a cerns English and French, Sui brings together two friendly sporting contest in which pride, but no sig- languages, in this case English and Chinese with ‘ ’ nificant prize, is at stake, i.e. roughly equivalent to contemplation of the creation of contact literature . ’ ‘it’s not a matter of life and death’. The other three Torres-Martinez s article on a constructionist are international cricketing slang: cow corner – area approach to phrasal verbs chimes directly with the on the leg-side boundary to which a batsman plays review by Laws of a major new text on Construction ’ an ‘agricultural’, i.e. unconventional slog; jaffa – an Grammar, while Chen s review evaluates a recent col- unplayable delivery; and chin music – short-pitched lection of innovative approaches to ELT. bowling designed to intimidate. The editors

doi:10.1017/S0266078415000280 2 English Today 123, Vol. 31, No. 3 (September 2015). Printed in the United Kingdom © 2015 Cambridge University Press Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.39.219, on 04 Oct 2021 at 11:16:00, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0266078415000280