Episode structure and discourse markers in sports commentary

The article is devoted to structural and semantic segmentation of sports commentary discourse. Two ways of such segmentation are offered. The first one implies dividing a transcript into primary and secondary discourse segments. In the primary segments, a commentator narrates an event play-by-play. Secondary discourse segments are thematic asides which allow for discourse coherence. Six types of secondary discourse segments have been found: “retrospective,” “participant,” “analytics,” “venue,” “communication,” “equipment.” The second method of discourse segmentation implies dividing discourse into episodes - semantic and structural units which are indicated by initial discourse markers and make the commentary structurally cohesive. The study carries out discourse analysis to segment the global structure of discourse and locate macropropositions along with functional and pragmatic analysis to elicit the principles of discourse markers use in commentators’ speech. The study also compares discourse structures of commentary of three types of sports: cycling, motor racing, football. Apart from traditional markers, we discuss new ones which are present in sports commentators’ speech: the marker of interest and the rhetorical question with a cliché. Thus, the article reveals genre features of sports commentary and potentially universal features of spoken Russian. The findings may be used in natural language processing at the tokenization stage of transcripts or subtitles.