Sunday 10 October 2010

The Stokes, Blackburns, Wolves

The pluralism meme is gaining momentum and critical mass, at least in the world of football. It may have appeared earlier, but its increasing use has been significantly noticeable from the beginning of the 2010-2011 football season (examples here and here).

The definition of a meme is “a unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena”. It was first described by Richard Dawkins back in 1976, and propagated by Susan Blackmore in her 1999 book The Meme Machine.

Fulham’s Danny Murphy is the latest to use pluralistic phrases, such as this gem:
"You get managers who are sending their teams out to stop other teams playing, which is happening more and more - the Stokes, Blackburns, Wolves."

The following newspapers and media outlets quoted Murphy's pluralistic phrase:

Managers must take responsibility for tackles - Murphy (BBS Sport)

Managers are to blame for dangerous tackles, says Fulham's Danny Murphy (Guardian Football)

Danny Murphy blames Blackburn, Stoke and Wolves bosses for scourge of 'stupid tackles' (Daily Mail Football)

MURPHY RAPS MANAGERS OVER TACKLES (Football365.com)

However, The Sun newspaper was incorrect in it’s reporting (no big surprise!). It misquoted Murphy saying:
"Stoke, Blackburn and Wolves, you can say they're doing what they can to win the game. But the fact is that the managers are sending the players out so pumped up that inevitably there are going to be problems.”

What’s even worse for The Sun is that they have posted the video of Danny Murphy’s speech, and you can clearly hear Murphy using pluralism and saying: “ … the Stokes, Blackburns, Wolves”. Poor reporting and transcribing by The Sun.

What Danny Murphy actually said, from 00:31 on the video clip (red text highlights the original speech changed by The Sun), was:
“… you know, the Stokes, Blackburns, Wolves … they can say ‘it’s effective and we’ve got to win games' but the fact is the managers are sending out the players so pumped up that inevitably there are going to be problems.”


Related Posts

The Chelseas and the Man Uniteds

Pluralism in Football

No comments:

Post a Comment