Abstract
This study is based on the analysis of language practices and features that different cricket commentators use in international cricket matches. This study explores that cricket commentary forms a complete register on its own with its field, tenor, and mode components. Data for this research have been taken from the 1992 World Cup, the 2015 World Cup, and the Ashes Series 2005 matches available on YouTube. Textual analysis technique has been employed for data analysis. After analyzing the data in the light of Halliday’s notion of register comprising field, tenor, and mode, it is found that cricket commentary is characterized by special syntactic features such as ellipsis, extensive use of exclamatory sentences, the abundant use of the simple present tense and simple sentences, passive construction notably in elliptical form, first and third conditionals, and inversion. Use of idioms, certain action verbs, certain positive and negative adjectives, and certain adverbs are some of the salient features of cricket commentary. Cricket commentary also has a special jargon with words like ‘knock’, ‘mid-on’, ‘mid-off’, ‘innings’ and ‘bouncer’ etc. Cricket commentators also use certain aspects of connected speech such as weak forms of words, elision, and assimilation.
Highlights
Cricket is the world’s second most popular spectator sport after football with 2.5 billion estimated fans
The reason for taking data from the 1992 World Cup is that Pakistan won this cup and cricket-loving Pakistanis cherish the joyful moments of this victory
The feature that this paper looks at is paralinguistic features of cricket commentary as one of the features of register
Summary
Cricket is the world’s second most popular spectator sport after football with 2.5 billion estimated fans. Most of the viewers in the subcontinent watch cricket matches on televisions, on mobile phones,. Two or more commentators give a running commentary on a match but they do it in an interesting and engaging way to make it a pleasant experience for the spectators and viewers. Speech is a skilled activity; it is neither an automatic reflex like sneezing nor spontaneous like laughing It is work as it requires effort and its degree of success depends upon the effort that is put into it. Cricket commentary is a skilled piece of discourse and commentators improve their art by practicing in matches. Commentators are articulate communicators and they use their knowledge of the game and their voice effectively to keep the viewers informed, entertained, and engrossed through their commentary. The present research paper explores the syntactic features, the lexicon, the formulaic nature, and some of the paralinguistic features of cricket commentary
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