«They Held Each Other in a Communicative Clinch»: a Showdown in Football Fans’ Subculture (by the Example of the Revier Derby Schalke 04 vs Borussia Dortmund)

The article considers cases of verbal conflict between football fans of competing clubs. The issue is analysed by the example of the famous German (Revier) derby in which the teams Schalke 04 (Gelsenkirchen) and Borussia (Dortmund) participate. The author gives account of the origin of the discourse of rivalry between the two clubs and their fans, characterizes the derby from the point of view of sports mass media, football fans, etc. The article states a great diversity of linguistic means, styles, genres used by fans of Schalke and Borussia to achieve communicative aims, of which the main is to humiliate, offend, downgrade in a communicative clinch the so-called ‘others’, attribute negative qualities to them, besmirch them in the eyes of people around (first and foremost representing the fan culture) and so on. It distinguishes the most frequent patterns of creating ‘tension’ and provocative modality in the analyzed discourse – intertextuality, metaphorization, play on words, mixing discourses. The author emphasizes linguistic creativity of both clubs’ fans in creating conflict speech acts, stresses comic attitude in many messages, whereby humour is employed to disguise offense. As a direction for further research the author proposes surveying the discourse of rivalry in fan subculture by the example of famous derbies held in other countries. Instances are given to demonstrate verbal attacks on an adversary in the communication of the Moscow clubs Spartak’s and CSKA’s fans. The methods used are discourse, contextual, stylistic, semantic, linguistic and cultural, axiometric analysis