СПОРТИВНЫЙ ДИСКУРС

The article dwells on the English language mixed martial arts (MMA) discourse which is interpreted as a variety of sports martial and interactive discourses. The main concepts that represent the entertaining aspect of MMA discourse are singled out. Among them are the following notions: “game”, “fun”, “entertainment”, “show”, “performance”, “pleasure”, etc. All of them have direct lexical representation and correspond with the relevant lexical units. At the same time, they can be indicated through synonymous words and phrases.

Franco-Canadians interested in sports discuss sports events on the Internet with famous sportsmen, coaches, journalists. One of the main topics of discussion is the evaluation of the achieved result. During the dialogue, different evaluation situations arise: the fan estimates the achievement of the athlete, the athlete evaluates his own achievements, the fan and the athlete evaluate the results of third parties. The article analyzes the correlation of positive and negative evaluations in different situations and gives characteristic examples of speech acts.

The article considers specific features of MMA fighters’ self-presentation. The strategy of self-presentation was studied predominantly on the basis of the political discourse, but it is used in the sport discourse as well. It has been found out that for self-presentation sportsmen actively use metaphors, epithets, similes, allegories, cliches, actualize such modality and formulas as ‘I am an underdog’, ‘I am the best’, ‘I am like you’.