A Comparative Analysis of Stylistic Features of Pakistani and British Cricket Commentary

Abstract

As a spontaneous and live form of sporting discourse, cricket commentary is a rich site of linguistic and cultural investigation. Involving the intersection of narrative, performance and emotion, it sheds light on how language is used in the construction of identity and national utterance. Although cricket has common roots in Britain and Pakistan, there are significant differences in the styles, tonality, structure and stylistic choices made in the two places. The objective of the incumbent researches is comparative analysis of the key lexical, syntactic and stylistic peculiarities of Pakistani and British commentary on cricket and exploration of the impact of cultural and regional peculiarities of the diverse cultural systems on the linguistic variation. The current research is founded on the approach of qualitative comparative that in turn points to the literature by Leech and Short (2007) and Simpson (2004). Recurring patterns of linguistic and stylistic patterns developed have been examined on a sampled corpus of televised commentaries of both of the social systems. The findings confirm that the British commentary is more disposed to such inclinations as clearness, calmness, analytical acuity and rather detached approach in contrast to Pakistani commentary that is characterized by certain emotional zest, switching code and expressiveness. These stylistic differences depict that commentary is not just reportage of sporting event but expression of social values and communicative norms.

Keywords

Lexical, Syntactic, Stylistic, Cultural, Regional Identities