An analysis of linguistic features of American football

Abstract

This thesis looks at the linguistic features that are used within American football whilst also comparing how such characteristics have been used before. A total of nine transcripts were taken and analysed to see if gridiron football commentary has gone through any major changes or if it has not really changed much over the years. The first part covers the language used in sports and their characteristics while also introducing the roles of the commentators and the differences between radio and television broadcasts that were used in the second part. Additionally, the first half of the paper takes a brief look at previous studies covering this topic. The second half of the paper compares several aspects, which were identified by previous studies and books on this topic.