The influence of viewers' frame on their appreciation of sports broadcasts : a sociolinguistic investigation

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A Japanese TV broadcast of the Atlanta Olympics women's marathon competition attracted strong criticism in a number of popular magazines and newspapers. The criticism focused mainly on the verbal style of the program's presenter and the commentator. Hypothesizing that this criticism reflects norms and expectations shared by the speech community members, we conducted an investigation into what elements of the broadcast upset the public. The TV broadcast of the women's marathon was compared with a radio broadcast of the same event and also with a TV broadcast of the men's marathon, in order to determine the expected characteristic style and possible deviations in sports broadcasts. The investigation includes phonological analysis of the presenters' rhythmic patterns, interactional analysis between the presenter and the commentator including numbers of utterances, turns, and modes, as well as backchanneling in connection with what has been mentioned and commentated on. The roles or positions the presenter and commentator have in relation to each other and the audience are also analyzed.In addition, a quantitative analysis is made of responses to a questionnaire in which respondents were asked to view and comment on the women's TV program.On the basis of our analysis from these multiple perspectives, we made a tentative proposal of the factors, which determine the public's preferred style of sports broadcasts.