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Article published In:
AILA Review
Vol. 34:2 (2021) ► pp.274–299

The evolution of football live text commentaries

A corpus linguistic case study on genre change

| TU Dresden

Since the emergence of online live text commentaries on football games in the late 1990s, the genre has undergone continuous change. While linguistic research on the genre of live text commentaries emphasizes its novelty, the genre has existed in football for at least 20 years. However, diachronic studies still lack. This paper presents a corpus linguistic analysis of genre and register-specific features of German live text commentaries from 2003 until 2020. Using quantitative methods, it focuses on the distribution of linguistic features on different linguistic (i.e. syntactical, lexical, graphemic etc.) levels over time. It is shown that various markers, which signal a colloquial register and emulate orality in the written mode, decrease, leading to a more impersonal way of reporting. Moreover, markers of individual perspective decrease in favor of a neutralistic stance. Thus, the evolution of live text commentaries can be described as a process of standardization.

Keywords: genre, genre change, corpus linguistics, football, live text commentary
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Register, genre and style
  • 3.Live text commentaries in the field of sports
  • 4.Data
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Quantitative results
    • 5.2The concept of scene
    • 5.3Syntactic features
    • 5.4Lexical features
    • 5.5Graphemic features
    • 5.6Stance taking and the representation of voices
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 31 January 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.21001.mei
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