Pragmatic Semantics in Football Fans’ «Banner» Communication in the German Language

Abstract

The article deals with utterances of German football fans written on banners used by them during matches as a means of communication. Football fans’ discourse is a distinctive linguistic semiotic form that reflexes the world view of representatives of this subculture. Despite the diversity of discourses it intersects with and a variety of concepts it exchanges with, it is the fan communication that provides the sports discourse with uniqueness and allows us to regard it as an integral part of the sports linguistic view of the world. Football fans’ discourse is formed by a number of subdiscourses, the so-called banner communication is one of them, possessing a prominent perlocutionary effect. The classification of utterances is based upon the theory of speech acts by J. Austin and G. Searle, but it also takes into consideration the latest achievements in this field as well as contemporary principles of pragmatic semantics. The article reveals the most effective techniques and mechanisms of building utterances to achieve the required pragmatic effect (metaphor, play on words, precedence, etc.),