Even those who do not follow (Slovene) soccer at all are familiar with the expressions ‘to point to the white spot’, ‘The Purples’ and ‘the eternal derby’. This master’s thesis focuses on the identification, analysis and comparison of the stylistic layers of language in sports reporting, namely on stylistically marked linguistic means of expression that appear in reports on the Slovene First League by the EkipaSN sports journal and the Ekipa.svet24.si website after the traditional autumn season break. The analysed articles are categorized either as reporting or evaluative texts. The hypotheses were half confirmed by means of linguistic and stylistic analysis, statistical comparison of the linguistic means of expression and by interpreting responses to the questionnaire submitted to readers, as well as conducting in-depth interviews with journalists from Ekipa. As expected (though inverted), the number of actualized linguistic means varies according to the type of media where actualisms surprisingly dominate in the contributions of the informative category. On the other hand, expectedly poorly represented automatisms are in a relatively equal extent present in both, reporting or evaluative texts. In addition, this study also finds that the frequency of actualisms, automatisms and journalistic stock phrases in sports reporting does not have a significant influence on differences in content in correlation to either of the media formats, but does influence the style of the text. The unique journalistic style of soccer jargon can lead to seemingly marked expressions gaining in frequency of use - via the processes of deactualization and automatization - to such extent that they lose markedness, meaning that the readership begins to perceive them as stylistically neutral.
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