The text chosen is a sports page report of a soccer match between England and Germany played at Wembley Stadium in London on 22nd November 2014. Germany won by three goals to nil. The article gives the match report, the attendance and the development of the English women soccer team over the years. It also gives the opinions of several players, the coach and sports analysts about the result of the match between the two teams. The text is posted online at a bbc.com soccer website (Thompson, 2014).
Soccer fans and the general public who have an interest in the development of women soccer are the targeted audience for the text. Other news pages and online forums are also targeted audience since the sports report gives a detailed analysis of the event.
The producer of the text is Anna Thompson, a sports writer with the British Broadcasting Corporation. The producer of the match report is female. In my opinion, the gender of the author of the text is not important since she is a trained professional and would report any other event in the same professional manner. A male reporter would more likely than not provided the same kind of highly analytical report as the one produced by Anna Thompson. The gender of the producer does not make a difference on how such an event would be reported (Thompson, 2014).
The text makes a positive representation of women because it reports a development of women participation in a sport that has been traditionally considered a men sport. The text reports a highly performing German women team that showed a high level of skill against an England team that has not won against them in 20 attempts. The article makes a mention that both teams have qualified for 2015 FIFA women world cup scheduled to be held in Canada. This is a further positive representation of women since a world cup competition is the highest level of women soccer and the two teams have qualified. The level of skill in soccer displayed in the soccer match by both teams was very high, and this reflects positively on women (Thompson, 2014).
The positive representation of women in the text is general to women soccerers. Since soccerers that feature in national teams are from different backgrounds, races and sexual orientation the text does not specify such details. It is a positive representation of sportswomen in general, and specifically women who play soccer. It can also be argued that the article does make a representation of sportswomen in general. The attendance of the match was quite high, with more than 40,000 fans attending the match. This is a positive representation of women because it shows that women sports can generate the same interest as men sports that have always been dominant (Thompson, 2014).
The text does could have made a more positive representation of women if the author had included in the report a deeper analysis on the development of women soccer in the two nations that were competing. It has taken a level of struggle for women to be allowed to compete in soccer, and more efforts and agitation went into the formation of national and international tournaments for women soccer. A brief inclusion of this history would have represented women more positively.
Works Cited
Thompson, Anna. England Women 0 – German Women 3, bbbc.com. Web. 23 Nov 2014. <http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/soccer/30037272>
