Tag questions in sport television broadcasting - A gender study

Abstract

Abstract: The present study examines tag questions in relation to sport television broadcasting and its hosts. The material was provided by Liverpool Football Club’s own television channel, LFC TV, and consists of 24 episodes of varied length. LFC TV offers both female and male hosts, something that does not cohere with the norm of the world of sport which otherwise is male dominated. The material provided by this channel agreed and disagreed with previous research regarding tag questions. The female host in this study did not dominate the discourse as much as the two male hosts did, which agrees with observations from previous research, but there were no significant differences regarding the amount of tag questions, which disagrees with earlier findings. At the same time, this study demonstrates that the female host uses tag questions for different reasons compared to the male hosts. She showed more concern for politeness and invitation to discourse whilst the men used tag questions due to a lack of certainty or to sustain the listeners’ attention. The tag questions in this study carried a relatively restricted amount of functions, and politeness and uncertainty were functions of the great majority of tag questions., The use of tag questions in order to elicit minimal responses occurred as well, however, rarely. All in all, the environment of sport television broadcasting offers interesting data for a study of language behaviour of male and female hosts.