| Abstract: |
Football radio Commentary makes use of a unique linguistic register which makes the game popular and
exciting among fans. This article therefore, explores the cohesive features of the language of football radio
commentary. This offers the language of football commentaries its proper position among the other genres
of sports commentaries. The corpus for this study comprises recorded radio commentary of the match
between Senegal at the African Cup of Nations (AFCON), 2002. For the purpose of this analysis, the
Halliday and Hassan?s model of cohesion is adopted. The findings show that radio football commentators
make use of simple sentences, the present simple, together with the perfection and progressive aspects of
the tense in reporting minutes-by-minutes events in football field. The study also reveals that the language
of football commentary is replete with cohesive ties such as repetition, references, substitutions, ellipses
and conjunctions. The study shows that football radio commentators rely on their ability to communicate
verbally to the audience. This is because the radio commentator, unlike his television counterparts, cannot
afford the luxury of keeping quiet. He is constantly narrating, evaluating and summarising events to ensure
that his audience who is not privileged to see the game, is adequately carried along. |
EBONYI JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE
