PECULIAR FEATURES OF COMMUNICATION IN THE SPORTS INTERNET DISCOURSE

The present article is devoted to the analysis of Internet discourse represented on web-sites of the British rugby teams. The aim of the research is identification of communicative situation features in the sport Internet discourse. The following tasks were fulfilled in order to achieve the aim: investigating peculiar features of language representation that is typical of a referential situation (an event, in this case – a sports competition) and the analysis of communicative discursive situation that takes place during transmission of the message covering this event. The articles from the news sections of the web-sites were used as the source of empirical data.

The research focuses on representation of a socially important event in the sports discourse – a sports match. The constituents of a situational model (Participants, their Actions, the Conditions) were singled out by means of the analysis of an extract belonging to the studied discourse. The analysis was carried out with the help of the traditional model of a news item: Event – Who, What, Where, When, Why, How. The analysis of linguistic representation of a situational model revealed that the event is performed on a macro- and a micro-levels. That aspect depends on the author’s focus either on the match, on the team as a whole or on the specific aspects of the event. The linguistic representation of both levels is demonstrated in the tables and illustrated by the relevant examples.

The following methods were used during the research: descriptive method, contextual-semantic method, method of content analysis as well as the method of discourse analysis. The peculiarities of communicative processes in the sports Internet-discourse were analyzed with the use of Hymes’ pattern S-P-E-A-K-I-N-G. The study of such elements as Setting and Scene, Participants, Ends, Act of Sequence, Genres is presented in the article.