Linguistic Routines in Sports Commentary

   The article is devoted to the use of linguistic routines in the speech of sports commentators. Linguistic routines are frequently repeated discourse units of sports commentary which capture competition events or their parameters
in verbal form. The use of linguistic routines is caused by internal and external constraints on the speech of a commentator who has to react quickly to the course of event. Linguistic routines are understudied in the field of oral spon-
taneous speech—a striking example of such speech is sports commentary. While generating discourse, commentators switch from one topic to another, verbally register events which happen at a sporting arena.
   The aim of the study was to determine linguistic routines which are inherent in the discourse of sports commentary of three types of sport: a cycling race, a motor race, and a football match.

   Two specific tasks included exploring the possibility of using linguistic routines as discursive markers (based on the statistical analysis of developed transcripts of sports commentary) and explaining socio- and psycholinguistic motivations for using linguistic routines.

   Apart from local lexical, grammatical, and discourse analyses of routine patterns, T. van Dijk’s discourse episode analysis was incorporated into the study. Ten types of linguistic routines have been revealed in commentaries of three different types of sport: three for each, and a universal one (“commentary on an instant replay”) implied by the broadcasting format. More specifically, sports commentators fill their speech with typical information on one of the parameters of a sporting event: time frame of a match/race, intermediate result, actions and relative locations of athletes. Such information is transmitted in fixed linguistic forms characterised as non-creative because of the frequency of sporting competition events. 29% of obtained linguistic routines had been placed at the beginning of discourse episodes, which speaks of their discourse marking potential.

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