Sport announcer talk
When people
describe a sporting event, the language they use is quite clearly
distinguishable from language used in other context. The most obvious
distinguishing feature is generally the vocabulary. But the grammar is equally distinctive. The
talk of sports announcers is known by ‘play-by-play’ description: it focuses on
the action, and is characterized by telegraphic grammar which involves
syntactic reduction and the inversion of normal word order in sentences. As
opposed to ‘colour commentary’ it focuses on people, with heavy and long
modifications or descriptions of nouns. In both types of commentary, as well as
in the ‘state of the play’ score or summary, sport announcers make extensive
use of linguistic formulas and routines.
Syntactic Reduction
Sport
announcers often omit the subject noun or pronoun. For example, the verb (be)
and the subjects (he) or (it) are omitted. The omitted parts are predicted in
the context. The referent is unambiguous.
Example:
From Baseball or Cricket commentaries.
a. [it] bounced to second base
b. [it’s] a breaking ball outside
c. [he’s a] guy who’s pressure player
d. Mc. Catty [is] in difficulty
e. Tucker [is] taking a few ah stuttering steps down the wicket from
the bowler’s end but Waugh [is] sending him back
Syntactic Inversion
Reversal or
inversion of the normal word order is another feature of sports announcer talk.
The device allows the announcer to foreground or focus on the action the action
and provides him or her with time to identify the subject of the action – an
important piece of information for listeners.
Example:
From Baseball or Cricket commentaries.
a. In comes Ghouri
b. And all set again is Pat Haden
c. On deck is big Dave Winfield
d. Pete goes to the right field and back
for it goes Jackson
Heavy Noun Modification
Example:
From Baseball or Cricket commentaries.
a.
David
Winfield, the 25 million dollar man, who is hitting zero, five, six in this
world series.
b.
First-base
umpire Larry Barnett
c.
This
much sough-after and very expensive fast bowler.
People rather
than action are the focus or interest at certain points during the sports
announcer’s spiel. When this is the case, the subject nouns which are the focus
of interest are often heavily modified both after the noun as in [a] and before
the nouns as in [b] and [c].
Routine and formulas
An interesting feature of sport
comment, that include race calling. It is the use of routine reduced the
memory burden on the speaker. The formulas involve a small number of fixed syntactic
patterns and a narrow range of lexical items.
Example:
a.
A
little wider on the track the favorite race ruler
Twilight
time is in behind those breaking up behind is Noodlum’s Fella
and he
went down
and
one tipped out was My Dalrae
b. El red the leader by two lengths from
Speedy Cheval
the
favourite race Ruler parked on the outside
followed
by Florlis Fella
Twilight
Time’s up against the rail
In this case
information about the sports even is given or conveyed formulaically (in
pre-determined formulas). The whole of
the play-by-play commentary- the description of the race while it is in
progress- is constructed in this way.
So in horse
races for example, we have a start formula, and a horse locator formula. These
formulas indicate information about the start and the position of the horses.
Example of start formula:
And they’re away (or off) (and racing
now)
Example of The horse locator formula:
(horse’s name) wide out on the outside
(horse’s name)
Finally, the
sound patterns of race calling are distinctive, use particular intonation
patterns. Pauses and hesitations are not acceptable in sports commentary. The
commentator must sound fluent and fast. The use of formulas allows for giving
information with the minimum demand on short term memory. Sports commentators
must also maintain the drama of the action. That is why they use volume and
intonation.
Conclusion
People’s speech reflects not only
aspects of their identity such as their ethnicity, age, gender, and social
background; it also reflects the contexts in which they are using the language.
The way people talk in court, in school, at business meetings and at graduation
ceremonies reflect the formality of those context and the social roles people
take in them.
We use more relaxed language at home
with those we know well. When we talk differently to babies and adults, or to
people from different social background, we are adapting or accommodating our
language to our audience.
Style, Context and Register is
continuity. So, if we only discuss one of them, such as Context or Style, the
understanding will not occur. In this chapter is concerned with language users
and to whom that language users use language. Automatically, it can be seen the
context and style registers in the talks. Actually, the understanding about the
context and style has already in our activity, so we have just improved it well
by learning from the environment and education. Variations in language, which
is a variation of the diversity of backgrounds and languages. So, people will
absorb the language of others who are considered attractive, but still within
the scope of understanding.
