Publication details
Humour in online sports commentaries
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2008 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The presentation deals with humour in online minute-by-minute sports commentaries (MBMs), i.e. match reports written by professional journalists in real time during sports games and made available to readers instantly on the Internet. The findings are based on online reports of recent football matches in English and published on the Guardian Unlimited website. Such sports commentaries are highly opinionated, with participants often highly critical of each other. Yet, their mutual irreverence is staged as a verbal spectacle full of verbal wit and insider humour. Humour in MBMs is interpreted as having basically two functions: on the one hand, it provides a metaphorical space in which the discourse participants can stage their mutual verbal contests and, on the other, it serves the purpose of bonding between the mostly male audience. The communication is so heavily dependent on the cultural and social context of the British speech community, as well as the readers’ fairly detailed knowledge of the past and the present of football, that it may be hypothesized that a kind of ‘joking culture’ is developing among the members of the virtual community of football fans. |
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