A Quantitative Approach to (Sub)Registers: The Case of `Sports Announcer Talk'

Abstract

Despite studies such as Biber (1988), quantitative methodologies remain under-exploited resources in discourse analysis. This study employs a quantitative, statistical approach to re-examine and rethink the rather well-explored topic of register. Using the extensively documented register of Sports Announcer Talk (SAT) as a case study, careful quantitative analysis exposes the limitations of traditional descriptive approaches to registers. Quantitative analysis reveals significant inter-register variation in the distribution of core SAT features in a television broadcast and a radio broadcast of a basketball game. Further, SAT features appear to function differently in the broadcasts: out of necessity in the radio broadcast and symbolically in the television broadcast. Such inter-register variation of variable frequency and feature function may be a product of differences in communication situation and communicative function related to broadcast media. Quantitative approaches allow more precise defining of (sub)registers and provide the researcher insight into the communicative function of discourse features.

The strategic enactment of a media identity by professional team sports players

“…A thread of this research has explored sports registers and genres (Bruce, 2004;Caldwell, 2009;Chovanec, 2009;Ferguson, 1983;File, 2012File, , 2013Ghadessy, 1988;Kuiper and Lewis, 2013;Lewandowski, 2012;Montgomery, 2010;Perez-Sabater et al, 2008;Reaser, 2003). The bulk of these studies have focused attention on the forms and functions of language used by sports players and media representatives (i.e.…”

Analysing ESP Texts, but How?

“…Register analysis has been applied in various academic and professional fields. Among the numerous foci of examining the typical language patterns of different communicative situations, sports announcer talk (Ferguson, 1983;Reaser, 2003), engineering English (Verantola, 1984), note-taking (Janda, 1985), academic prose (Biber, 1988), newspaper, radio and other media registers (Bell, 1991;Biber et al, 1999), personal ads (Bruthiaux, 1994), coaching (Heath & Langman, 1994), classified ads (Bruthiaux, 1996), abstracts of research articles (Connor, 1996;Flowerdew, 2002;Hyland & Tse, 2005), research articles (Conrad, 1996;Hyland, 1998), textbooks (Conrad, 1996;Hyland, 1999), scientific prose (Atkinson, 1999;Conrad & Biber, 2001), medical guidebooks (Vilha, 1999), internet registers (Crystal, 2001;Gains, 1999;Herring & Paolillo, 2006), student essays (Hyland, 2002), PhD dissertations (Hyland & Tse, 2004;Paltridge, 2002), computer-based instant messaging (Fox et al, 2007;Thurlow, 2003), middle English medical texts (Taavitsainen & Pahta, 2004), university lectures (Biber 2006;Biber et al, 2007;Csomay, 2005), news in tabloids (Bednarek, 2006), dating chats (del-Teso-Craviotto, 2006), office conversation (Koester, 2006) were discovered through giving register analytical attention to them.…”

Sport in Transition: Emerging Trends on Culture Change in the Anthropology of Sport

“…The plethora of archaeological analyses of the Mesoamerican ballgame, for example, is testament to this phenomenon (e.g., Alegria 1951;Scarborough & Wilcox 1991;Whittington 2001). Experimental archaeologists have also shown an interest in both ancient and contemporary sport (e.g., Whittaker and Camp 2006), and within linguistics, there have been a variety of studies on sport and language, including, for instance, sport announcer discourse (Ferguson 1983;Reaser 2003). Ultimately, while relatively few anthropologists outside of socio-cultural anthropology would refer to themselves as ''sport anthropologists,'' all four subfields have made contributions to the anthropological study of sport.…”