Sports fanaticism as a disease: a Corpus-based study of metaphors in Saudi newspapers

Sports fanaticism seems to be a social and national concern in Saudi Arabia. This paper aims: 1) to identify the metaphorical manifestations and highlight the discursive construction of disease as associated with sports fanaticism in a corpus of Saudi newspapers articles; and 2) to seek plausible explanations for the emergence and use of disease metaphors in newspapers articles addressing sports fanaticism. King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology Arabic Corpus (KACSTAC) served the data for the current study. The analytical procedures were informed by the discourse dynamics approach and metaphor-led discourse analysis. Findings show that sports fanaticism could be associated with the following systematic metaphors: 1) disease, in general; 2) disease causes; 3) disease symptoms; 4) disease evaluations; and 5) disease needs for medical solutions, interventions, treatments, and/or prescriptions. The discussion evokes a number of aspects: sports fanaticism emerges as a key topic; disease metaphors seem to be shaped and developed by the societal context and the nature of newspapers texts and discourse; they are enriched and influenced by the discourse situation and the needs to jointly construct and communicate intense experiences through specific evaluations and referential functions, which have a powerful resonance for the Saudi national and social levels; the use of disease metaphorical frames can structure our understanding and can simplify the concept of fanaticism.