Pragmatics of Sports News Reports

The paper aims to build the structure of sports news reports by bridging them to pragmatics hence coming up with their pragmatic structure. Accordingly, two pragmatic concepts (viz. cooperative principle and speech acts) are believed to be helpful in performing this task. Moreover, the notion of dialectical relevance, developed by Walton (1995), is utilized. This is done by pragmatically analyzing eight news reports of different sports (football, tennis, formula1, and golf, respectively) taken from the BBC sports official website. The analysis is carried out by means of an eclectic model developed by the study itself to serve this aim. This type of analysis is supported by a statistical analysis to quantitatively validate its findings. The two types of analysis basically show that there are no major differences between the games analyzed as to employing the various strategies compiling the aforementioned analytic tool.

According to Bell (ibid.),news is made up of: hard news, features articles, special topic news and headlines.He details each component as follows: 1).Hard news: e.g., accidents, crimes, announcements 2).Feature articles: also called soft news, whose boundaries with the hard peer is usually fuzzy.
The Public Affairs Qualification (cited in web source 1), in their turn, define news by means of its characteristics which the call "The Big Five": consequence, interest, timeliness, proximity, and prominence.Each is briefed below: 1).Consequence: Its main task is to inform and educate moral and/or social lessons-it provides "should know" information.An example is: the political situation in Iraq, 2).Interest: As the name shows, it rests upon unusualness, entertainment and emotion-arouse that people talk about it.Examples are: conjoined twins undergoing surgery to be separated, the death of Margret Thatcher or a water skiing squirrel.
3).Timeliness: It has to do with trendy news or news of the moment, e.g., A tax story regarding a change in tax law.4).Proximity: It refers to domestic issues, trends or events, e.g., A family losing a loved one in the battle of liberating Mosul.5).Prominence: This pertains to well-known people and/or events or stories that grab media attention, e.g., Bill Gate's wealth.
Mixing these two opinions together helps the present work define sports news as: Special-topic pieces of information whose main characteristic is interest, especially entertainment.
Owing to the point that the main concern of this paper is sports news reports, it seems self-evident to give a brief idea about a news report.Agu (2015, p. 22) defines a news report as a provider of "details of a news story [whose purpose is] to give the reader or listener information in an interesting but objective way".
Rudiments of a News Story Sunday et al. (2012, pp. 35-37) list the following principles for any news story, which are at the same time deemed a yardstick against which the value of news is measured: 1).Accuracy: This is a quality-based principle.It has to do with the precision of presenting data in news.
2).Attribution: This means source-ascription, whereby the story is attributed to a source.Attribution, however, does not guarantee the truth of the news presented; the onus of truthfulness is placed wholly with the source per se.
3).Balance and Fairness: This hinges upon impartiality whereby the different parties in news are treated equally and justly with no bias to occur.4).Brevity: This is concerned with the amount of writing-less words, more meaning.It is preferable here to stick to the subject-verb-object structure, avoiding both adverbs and adjectives.5).Clarity: This means the obviousness of writing by means of using words which communicate the required meaning without much processing.6).Human Interest: This involves embracing elements of interest within the story, so that it could attract the reader's (or hearer's) attention.Such things as people, their reactions, expectations and their concerns are subsumed under this heading.7).Identification: This has to do with pinpointing the people being talked about.The standard identification format is to mention the: name, age, address and occupation.8).News point: This is concerned with the main theme the story; it provides the "backbone" of the whole story.9).Objectivity: This means impersonalizing what is written: the unbiased aspect of the writer wherein any personal opinion is excluded.10).Verification: Here, there is a process of checking information against some source: "it is recognition of the need for truth" (ibid., p. 37).This principle bolsters that of accuracy.According to Sunday et al.,  These are clear enough linguistic phenomena that have been dealt with extensively throughout the past years.Nevertheless, the way they are utilized in news is what our work is concerned with.

Quotations
The subtlety of quotations lies not in the quotation itself as it is in the selection per se.That is to say, quotations are the exact words used by a source on some topic; yet selecting a specific quotation does not necessarily pertain to the context created in the news, they might have been said in another context.Accordingly, the use of quotations has two valences: objective and subjective.The former resides in the exact words, the latter in the selection of those words (ibid., p. 13).There is a sub-category of quotes where single words, not complete clauses or sentences, are enclosed between quotation marks-scare quotes as named by Bell (1991, p. 208).Their effect is to question, disparage, undermine or be aware of what they enclose.Bell (ibid.)cites the following example: Indian Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh accused Pakistan today of "evil designs" as tensions between the two countries rose after skirmishes along their disputed border in Kashmir.

Reported Speech
This refers to the process of reporting what others say by means of the reporter's own words not the source's.
The reporter communicates what is said via a particular verb (i.e., reporting verb) which shapes what comes next, as believed by Pajunen (2008, p. 13).He (ibid.)lists the following reporting verbs distributing them on a continuum of neutrality and non-neutrality (which does not necessarily indicate bias, it just highlights some specific opinion): 1).Say, tell, and the non-finite form according to: These are neutral as far as the reporter's opinion is concerned.
2).Claim and agree: They should be used in the right context because they yield particular meaning which are context-sensitive.
3).Snap and smile: These are subjective reporting verbs, with the former pinpointing pejorative affections, and the latter positive counterpart.

Hypothesis
The study hypothesizes that the different kinds of sports (i.e., the data under scrutiny) differ in their employment of the various strategies which constitute their pragmatic structure.To verify or reject this hypothesis, the model developed by the study is used and then the obtained findings are handed over to statistical analysis by means of the percentage equation to quantitatively validate them.

Method
In order to objectively analyze the data of the work, a model is developed to serve this aim.Following is a detailed description of the pragmatic structure embracing the various strategies used to analyze sports news reports.

Pragmatic Structure of News as Developed in This Paper (The Eclectic Model)
After surveying the most relevant components of news as approached in this study, the pragmatic structure, intended to be developed here, is ready to be processed.Van Dijk's (1988) generic structure is only partially adopted owing to the following: 1).It analyzes news as a piece of discourse at various levels: semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, stylistic and even rhetorical.Such an all-embracing treatment resembles very much the proverb "A jack of all trades is a master of none".His work cannot be described as semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, etc.This miscellaneous tackling is what distinguishes his work from ours which is purely pragmatic.
2).His work pertains to news in general with no reference to any particular type (thus the term generic).The trend in this work, by contrast, is mainly formulated for sports news reports.
Accordingly, the pragmatic structure of the aforementioned news is synthesized as follows: It consists of two major categories: Summary Category and Main Events Category.Each is re-modeled below:

Summary Category
As indicated above, this category hinges upon a headline and a lead.The headline is, also, of two types: summary (involving a neutral stand); and connotative in which pragmatics comes to the scene.However, since this study is mainly pragmatic, the neutral stand representing the summary type, then, is instantiated by the speech act of summarizing, for the sake of keeping to consistency.
Connotative meaning, Leech (1974, p. 14) defines, "is the communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to, over and above its purely conceptual content".This definition is pragmatically mirrored in the concept of conversational implicature via which more is communicated than what is literally said.This entails equating connotation to the conversational implicature generated by violating one or more of the Gricean maxims.
As far as the lead is concerned, it is evaluated by the three scales indicated before: brevity, clarity, and newsworthiness.Interestingly, these scales also equate the Gricean maxims: quantity, quality (or manner) and relevance, respectively.This equation should not trigger the over-hasty conclusion that both elements are analyzed by means of those maxims; only the headline is analyzed as such.The lead, however, is analyzed by another principle: relevance.It is so because of the point previously highlighted that the most relevant information comes first in the lead.Moreover, Wilson & Sperber (2004, p. 607) argue that "the expectations of relevance raised by an utterance are precise enough and predictable enough to guide the hearer towards the speaker's meaning".Nevertheless, by relevance is not intended the notion developed by Sperber and Wilson whereby relevance is dealt with at two levels: cognitive and communicative.Instead, the notion of dialectical relevance as developed by Walton (1995) is adopted.According to him (ibid., p. 163), "relevance of any argument or any of its parts is to be sought in understanding just how it or they contribute to the structure of the dialogue [report] as a whole".Dialectical, that is, purposeful, relevance is of two major types which Walton (1995 and2006) calls topical and probative.By the first is meant "subject-matter overlap", as in Socrates is Greek.Plato is Greek (Walton, 1995, p. 171).
Probative relevance, on the other hand, is proposition or speech act-based.It is used to (dis)prove another proposition, as in: All Athenians are Greek and Socrates is Athenian.Socrates is Greek (Walton, 2006, p. 271).
This makes Walton's relevance show the relationship between the various components of a text.As such, the relationships between the lead and the headline, on one hand, and between them and the main events category, on the other, are revealed.It is necessary to state that relevance in the model diagram is numbered, in which relevance1 refers to the relationship between the headline and lead, whereas relevance 2 belongs to that holding between the two main categories.Van Dijk (1988, p. 53) can help justify such a procedure: the headline and lead in tandem express the major topics of the text; hence the type of relevance maintained between them differs from that holding between the two main categories.

Main Events Category
The two subcategories here are quotations and reported speech.The first accepts no explanation as it represents the source's exact words.Only that special type of quotations-scare quotes-is analyzed, if any, as shown below.Analyzing the reported speech is what matters to this work.
As previously pointed out, reported speech has two parts: the reporting verb and the reported content.As regards the former, the most commonly used verbs are already listed by Pajunen (See above).However, if other verbs are used in the data, they will also be added to the analysis.Concerning the reported content, it is to be analyzed by invoking Mustafa (2010, p. 40) who defines news reporting as "process which includes acts of assert, state that, and affirm".Accordingly, analyzing the reported content is performed by means of speech acts which are mainly but not restrictively assert, state, and affirm.Still, an open node is left should any kind of speech act is discovered other than those already listed.
One last point to raise here is that since a scare quote does not enclose complete clauses or sentences, thus it occurs within reported speech.Whenever such a case arises, it is also analyzed by means of speech acts as the case with the reported content.
The following diagram schematically depicts the pragmatic structure of sports news reports as developed in this paper whereby the arrow maintains two references: 1).The component part of some element; and

2). The relationship between one category and another
The double bracket, in its turn, encloses a category.But before that, they face the biggest game in their history.
On Sunday, the second-tier side play in their first Norwegian Cup final -against the country's most successful team, Rosenborg.
"I have quite a special role in Kongsvinger," Nystuen told the BBC World Football Show."Luis is my boss on the pitch-and off the pitch, I'm the one taking the decisions.
"I'm definitely on my way down as a player.When I'm out on the pitch, I act like I've always done, no matter what coach I have had.It's of course him who makes the decisions.In the office, we have managed to create a good atmosphere.For me, in the role as director, it's much more calm.On the pitch it's more feelings, emotions Despite their success, the pair do have their disagreements over team selection-although the dispute is not over whether Nystuen, who can be as confident as a player can be of starting a cup final, plays.Could Kongsvinger write the greatest chapter in their 124-year history this weekend?

When Nystuen was asked what happens if
Nystuen, who wears the number 10 shirt, is a realist."They are probably the biggest favourites who have ever been in the cup final in Norway," he said.
"They have a far better side than us but we have created a good atmosphere.If we are going to beat Rosenborg, which of course will be difficult, that is our biggest strength-we run more than them and work harder for each other than they do.If we manage to do it, it has to be in that way."

Summary Category
The headline is connotative because it communicates more than what is literally said, as such an implicature is generated.It is initiated by violating the relevance maxim: a player does not hire and/or fire managers.Thus, there is a reference to Nystuen's power over the team as a whole.
The lead, i.e., the underlined words above selected on the basis that it is the first paragraph in a news report (Cf.4.2.1.1 above), is probatively related to the headline.This can be shown as follows: The headline implies that Nystuen is an especially powerful player who can hire and fire mangers; the lead, in turn, also pinpoints the issue of power which Nystuen has, nevertheless, taken to another level.Hence, the main point in both categories (i.e., headline and lead) is Nystuen's special power.

Main Events Category
Owing to the fact that there might occur more than one quotation in the news, each quotation with its reporting verb is cited for the sake of clarity and accurate statistics.In the office, we have managed to create a good atmosphere.For me, in the role as director, it's much more calm.On the pitch it's more feelings, emotions".
The reporter's opinion here is neutral due to the use of the "told" (The reported content, in turn, involves the following speech acts: statement and assertion.
When Nystuen was asked what happens if Pimenta drops him, he joked: "Then he's finished right away.He wouldn't dare do that".
The reporter's positive opinion is manifested by the use of the verb joke.The reported content, however, involves the speech act of assertion.

Nystuen wants more youngsters in the first team. "The first-team coach of course has to think about what's best
for the first team, while my role I also care about what happens to the second and junior teams.

"We don't agree all the time about giving those youngsters their best match level and development. Not only doing what's best for the next match but also thinking one and two years ahead. But it has worked quite well even though we have had our fair amount of discussions".
What is remarkable about this quotation is its being free from any reporting verb.Moreover, the reported content does not communicate what is mentioned in the quotation.That is, Nystuen "cares about what happens to the second and junior teams", whereas the reporter claims "Nystuen wants more youngsters in the first team" which is inadequate because caring about something is not the same as wanting it.It follows that such kind of data does not lend itself for being analyzed by the developed model and hence its accuracy shows (i.e., the model's).
Nystuen, who wears the number 10 shirt, is a realist."They are probably the biggest favourites who have ever been in the cup final in Norway," he said.
"They have a far better side than us but we have created a good atmosphere.If we are going to beat Rosenborg, which of course will be difficult, that is our biggest strength-we run more than them and work harder for each other than they do.If we manage to do it, it has to be in that way." Again, the reporter here is neutral as he uses said.The reported content employs statement as its instantiating speech act.
The type of relevance maintained between the first and second categories is topical because the Nystuen's quotations invoked do not prove or disprove the first category; they just show his position and not how he can fire and/or hire mangers, which is the pillar of this news.

Andy Murray claims place in Shanghai Masters final as Novak Djokovic loses
Andy Murray is through to the Shanghai Masters final and will play Roberto Bautista Agut, after Novak Djokovic smashed his racquet and tore his shirt as he lost to the Spaniard.
Murray reached his 10th final of the year with a determined 6-4 6-3 semi-final win over France's Gilles Simon.
The 29-year-old Briton, seeking his sixth title of the year, saw off world number 32 Simon in a confident display.
If Murray wins Sunday's final he will be just 915 points behind Djokovic in the annual rankings points, increasing his chances of finishing as the year-end world number one.
Having ripped his shirt open in frustration, Djokovic was further incensed at receiving a time violation when changing into a new one, raising the point forcefully with umpire Carlos Bernardes at the end of the match.
"He was the star of the show," Djokovic said of the official."That's what he wanted to be today.
"But there are definitely things that I need to regain from the emotional, mental point of view." Djokovic, who has won the event three times and was also aiming to reach his 10th final of the season, said exhaustion may have played a part in his mood during the match.
"I had to experience this sooner or later," he said."I knew I could not go on playing at the highest level for so many years all the time." The world number 19 took the first set against Djokovic in 42 minutes with his first break point and broke three times in the next to triumph in an hour and 47 minutes.
The Serb, who had won all five of his previous encounters with his opponent, could make little headway against Bautista Agut's intrepid, athletic baseline tactics.
Djokovic failed to take the two break-point chances he was able to create in the opening set and it was his opponent who seized the opportunity, prompting the 12-time Grand Slam title winner to smash his racquet beyond repair.
Djokovic had committed 37 unforced errors before beating world number 110 Mischa Zverev in the previous round, and was soon a point away from a 5-2 deficit in the second set against 15th seed Bautista Agut.
He held off three match points as the Spaniard's serve showed signs of tension, but made further mistakes when serving to level at 5-5-with 29 unforced errors in total during the contest-as Bautista Agut reached a Masters final for the first time.
Murray has said that reaching the world number one spot is his main aim for the rest of the 2016 season.
However, speaking after his match with Simon, he accepted that Djokovic's exceptional start to the season has made that "difficult" for him.
"I said that I want to try to get to number one, but I'm still quite far away from [Djokovic], so I'm not thinking about the number one ranking this week or right now," he said.
"I just want to finish this year as best as I can, it's been the most successful in my career.
"The last few months have been some of the most consistent I have been, so I just want to keep it going until the end of the year and finish as strong as possible." Novak Djokovic has experienced a strange sensation in recent months Having not lost his serve throughout the tournament, Murray was broken in the very first game of the match, setting the tone for a compelling opening set.
After six successive breaks of serve Murray capitalised on a set point when, having been lobbed himself, he raced back and produced a sublime backhand lob of his own.
The first set took 53 minutes, but Murray clicked into a higher gear in the second, pulling away from the determined Simon.
The match seemed done and dusted when Murray was serving for a place in the final at 5-1, only for a combination of Simon's grit and the Scot's serving errors to keep both men on court.
That quickly became back-to-back games for Simon, leaving Murray under some pressure in his second attempt to serve out the match.
But the Scot thrives under such pressure, and sent down an ace to seal his place in yet another final.

Summary Category
The headline in this example is of the summary type, that is, it does not connote any extra meanings.This is supported by what is mentioned in the lead which summarizes what is previously stated in the headline.Thus, these two elements are probatively related.

Main Events Category
"He was the star of the show," Djokovic said of the official."That's what he wanted to be today.
"But there are definitely things that I need to regain from the emotional, mental point of view." The reporter is neutral in expressing his opinion here as the verb "said" is used.Besides, two speech acts are issued in this example: statement and assertion.
"I had to experience this sooner or later," he said."I knew I could not go on playing at the highest level for so many years all the time." Again, the reporter is neutral owing to the use of "said".What is more, affirmation is the speech act detected here.
"I said that I want to try to get to number one, but I'm still quite far away from [Djokovic], so I'm not thinking about the number one ranking this week or right now," he said.
"I just want to finish this year as best as I can, it's been the most successful in my career.
"The last few months have been some of the most consistent I have been, so I just want to keep it going until the end of the year and finish as strong as possible." The neutral opinion is expressed by using the verb "said".Three statements are issued here as the speech acts invoked.
The type of relevance linking between the two categories is probative because everything mentioned in the report serves the point raised by the headline.

Formula 1
Lewis Hamilton: Mercedes will wait to decide on any action for ignoring team orders

Bottom of Form
Will Rosberg and Hamilton become best of friends, again?
Mercedes say there is "no rush" to decide whether to take further action against Lewis Hamilton following the Main Events Category "There's no time pressure," a spokesman said."We'll let the whole thing settle and then figure out the way forward.
"For now, the focus is on savouring and celebrating the world championships." The reporting verb used here is "said", thus the neutral point of view is recorded.Two speech acts are issued: promise and statement, respectively.
But he rejected their commands and told his team to "let us race".
The neutral report is expressed by "told".An example of scare quotation is presented here."So we have to calm down.There is so much more going on in the background that plays a role in how we are thinking and this is why I don't want to express an opinion before I have actually made up my mind for myself." The reporting verb used here is "tweeted".Three speech acts are invoked: affirmation, statement and justification, respectively.
Rosberg said: "I wasn't expecting it, no.Maybe that was a bit naive, but I didn't expect it.
"But it's not something I need to discuss because it is really easy to understand the team's side because we have done the same thing all year and it doesn't change in the last race, but at the same time you can understand Lewis.
"It's the world championship and we are out there fighting and you have to understand he wants to try something.We don't need to discuss it anymore." The use of the verb "said" supports the neutral viewpoint of the reporter.Three speech acts are issued here: statement, affirmation, and statement, respectively.
The two categories are probatively related to each other, everything mentioned in second category is used to prove what is pointed out in the first.

Golf
Charley Hull wins the CME Group Tour Championship for first LPGA title

Bottom of Form
England's Charley Hull has won the CME Group Tour Championship by two shots to earn her first LPGA title.
The 20-year-old finished on a tournament record 19 under par to beat South Korea's Ryu So-yeon.
Hull startedz the final round with a one-shot lead ahead and shot six birdies in her bogey-free round for a six-under-par 66 at the Florida course.
"It's wicked to do it at 20," she said."It feels good to be joining the winners this year."

Results
After prag means of t calculated that conclu developed

"
I have quite a special role in Kongsvinger," Nystuen told the BBC World Football Show."Luis is my boss on the pitch-and off the pitch, I'm the one taking the decisions."I'm definitely on my way down as a player.When I'm out on the pitch, I act like I've always done, no matter what coach I have had.It's of course him who makes the decisions.
from Liverpool John Moores University, in 2014, the club have won promotion from the third tier and are in the play-offs this season bidding to return to the top flight.
ijel.ccsenet.Note.CP: Co2.2 Data A Pimenta drops him, he joked: "Then he's finished right away.He wouldn't dare do that".Nystuen wants more youngsters in the first team."The first-team coach of course has to think about what's best for the first team, while my role I also care about what happens to the second and junior teams.
"We don't agree all the time about giving those youngsters their best match level and development.Not only doing what's best for the next match but also thinking one and two years ahead.But it has worked quite well even though we have had our fair amount of discussions".
It is instantiated by the speech act of invitation.Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff said: "We need to look at the overall situation and say "what does it mean?""Everything is possible-from "let's change the rules next year because it doesn't work in those critical races and maybe we want to give them even more freedom in racing each other", to the more harsh side that we feel the team's values were not respected."Thisis180 degrees and I am not sure yet where the needle is going to go."A neutral viewpoint is communicated by using the verb "said".The speech act of statement is what is detected at this point.
"I was in two minds," he said, adding the team values of Mercedes are "pretty clear" and "it cannot make a difference whether it was the first or last race"."Thoseprinciplesandvalueshavewon us races and championships and so this is one side.Two reporting verbs are used here-both are neutral: said and added.The speech act issued is statement.Nico Rosberg tweeted a picture of himself and friends, including Red Bull driver Daniel Ricciardo, celebrating 2016 F1 title win."And the other side, me the racer, says maybe I would have done the same."Hehad two choices-disappear into the distance and show he is the quickest guy on the planet irrespective of what's happening in the back or decide the other way and bunch them up behind him.