Pirlo Scores!!! An Analysis of Live English Football Commentary

Abstract

Through the last decades, football has become one of the most popular sports all over the world. This status brings an immense responsibility upon the live football commentators, who have to bare in mind many of the linguistic and non-linguistic features that deal with this act of football commentating. Therefore, this study lays its focus on those aspects that seem relevant and distinctive to other oral speeches, with the attempt to prove that live football commenting has so many different features that it would have to be considered as an independent register. Apart from analysing football commentary as a whole, this study also tries to make a distinction between two of the most popular mediums since decades, radio and television. This practical study consists of the analysis of all the distinctive elements that have been encountered in a Premier League game between Chelsea and Middlesbrough in the year 2017. The same game has been analysed through the most popular British group of sport channels “Sky Sports”, as well as by the British radio chain “BBC”, allowing us to analyse and make comparisons of the act of English live football commentary, reaching to the conclusion that indeed, it can be considered as a specific and independent register.