Thesis (M.A.) - Cairo University - Faculty Of Arts - Department Of English

The massive media coverage of most sports events , the large amounts of money invested in sport , as well as the huge audience sport draws make of sports - in - media an area worth studyingTelevised sports commentary , the focus of the present study , represents a type of monologic discourse where the mass media audience is not co - present in the commentator's physical context and hence commentators cannot interact either verbally or nonverbally with the remote home viewersThe present study aims to identify the characteristic linguistic features of televised football commentaryCertain salient discoursal and syntactic devices are analyzed in British English and Egyptian Arabic football commentary as relevant to certain discoursal functions which are themselves very much related to the nature of televised football commentaryThese discoursal functions include coping with the fast pace of action , involving the audience , and identifying participantsThe present study reaches significant findings concerning the nature and characteristics of this type of discourseAnalysis of the English and Arabic corpora reveals striking similarities between the two languages particularly in the way the English and Arabic commentators use the selected linguistic devices to serve different functionsThe insignificant difference discerned when analyzing the English and Arabic corpora highlights the universal nature of this type of discourse which partly stems from the nature of the game itself as well as the mediumHowever , similarity can be traced to the fact that commentators , regardless of the language used in commentary , draw upon certain linguistic conventions that help them in their task

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