Image schemas and the semantics of Serbian sports terminology: An innovative approach

The terminology used in specialized areas of study is an essential part of communication among people active in those fields. However, variations in terminology across languages and cultures can hinder communication. This paper aims to outline the potential of using image schema clusters in analyzing (Serbian/English) sports terminology. The image schemas of FORCE <F>, PATH <P>, LINK <L>, and BALANCE <B>, their scalar values, and their corresponding specifiers (<end path>, <cycle>, <up>, etc.) were used to annotate and analyze a group of 140 Serbian language sports terms. An important part of the annotation process was the parsing of the event/movement to determine the number of individual segments included in the performance of each and ascribing to it specific schemas, their level of scalarity, and the appropriate specifiers. The focus was on the dynamic mental simulations of movement in sports, which are described as dynamic events that depict the athlete’s body in motion through time and space. The analysis addressed the issue of overcoming non-literal descriptions in sports terminology in favor of conveying the abstract nature of the underlying structures, thus rendering them universal. The findings indicate that the proposed image schema identification protocol can be used to identify the image schema clusters and their scalar values that determine the terms in the corpus. The study contributes to the achievement of transparency and clarity in sports terminology by precisely determining and formulating the meaning of concepts related to specific sports terms, which is essential for unimpeded communication in this area.