Inside the commentator’s booth: a Multimodal (Inter)action and Conversation Analysis on the production of first division football commentary on TV

Abstract

Abstract This paper discusses the linguistic features of the production of football commentary within its macrosocial contexts. It contrasts the communication of the TV production team during a football game with the live football commentary aired on TV. Applying a mixed methods analysis, it reveals how football commentary is prepared and produced in the technical setting of the commentator’s booth in a stadium. This study reveals how a medial reality of the same events concerning a goal are broadcasted in the 11 min highlight video football commentary. The author and her co-principal investigator video recorded a total of 36 h in four work settings. Finally, retrospective interviews with the commentator and head of sports of the TV station place the study in the broader social context of football as a media production. In this paper, I show how live football reporting is prepared and conducted using two different theoretical and methodological frameworks: Conversation Analysis (CA) and Multimodal (Inter)action Analysis (MMIA). Both provide insight into the synthetic verbal, non-verbal and parallel actions for the successful production of the football commentary and they also reveal the sequential structure of naturally occurring talk (CA).