Alison Trumbull Woman in a Man's World: Pam Ward and the Register of Sportscasting Talk
Click here to download Alison Trumbull's paper in .pdf format.

University of California at Los Angeles
Department of Applied Linguistics and TESL
3300 Rolfe Hall
P.O. Box 951531
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1531
atrumbul@ucsl.edu

Abstract

A woman's successful performance in a traditionally male profession is often seen as a sign of progress toward gender equality. However, is comparable job performance an indicator of changes in the profession, or woman's adaptation to a male genre? This paper raises that question through a comparison of the language use of a female play-by-play announcer to that of a male performing the same job. A review of literature on gender and sports in the United States establishes the social and historical contexts for this analysis. References to relevant work on the construction of speech communities and the relationship between intonation and gender are also included. Using sportscasting talk from televised football games, the author analyzes the syntactic features of sportscasters' speech, including copula deletion and subject-predicate inversions. Intonational features, such as wide pitch swings and accelerated tempo, are analyzed as well. In addition, the author examines the routine changes in conversational footing that are part of the sportscasting register. The paper concludes that the observed differences in the talk of these individual sportscasters cannot be conclusively attributed to gender. The nature of each sportscaster's talk appears to be due to the combination of the requirements of the job, individual personalities, and influences of the sportscasting partner. This apparent similarity in use across genders raises the question of whether successful female use of a traditionally male register is a truly a transformation of the register, or simply one woman's consenting to talk like a man.

Poster Materials

Introduction
The purpose of this project is to examine the sociolinguistic aspects of one woman's entrance into a male profession. Pam Ward occupies a unique place in the largely masculine history of both sports and the sportscasting register: Her significant actions are not on the playing field, but in her words.

Data and method
The data for this study comes from two Saturday games on the cable channel ESPN2. Pam Ward and Chris Spielman were the play-by-play announcer and cololr analyst, respectively, for the game between the University of Miami and the University of West Virginia on October 26, 2002. On November 2, 2002, Dr. Jerry Punch was the play-by-play announcer and Sean Salisbury was the analyst for a game between Florida State University and Wake Forest University. To isolate similar game situations, the data includes three sets of the following actions from each game: the play that results in a touchdown, the consequent extra point attempt, and a brief replay of the touchdown before the channel goes to a commercial break.

Pam Ward
Pam Ward is considered by many to be a pioneer in her field. She is the only woman play-by-play announcer working in nationally broadcast football. Ward works for ESPN, routinely announcing games in the Big Ten Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference (NCAA Division I) on ESPN2.

Relevant theory
Existing works on sports participation, speech communities, professional methods, and the register of sportscasting provide insights into the forces at work in the actions of sportscaster talk. Nelson (1994) and Messner (1992) describe the gendered history of sport in the United States, while Hoyle (1989) and Ferguson (1983) provide information on sportscasting as a register. An understanding of the relevance of speech communities comes from Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1999) and Gal and Woolard (1995). In addition, McConnell-Ginet (1978) supplies information about the development of gendered intonation, and Goodwin (1994) offers a "vision" for understanding a profession's particular ways of seeing and speaking.

Some important points from these authors include:

1) "Societal institutions are not neutral context for talk. They are organized to define, demonstrate, and enforce the legitimacy and authority of linguistic strategies used by one gender...while denying the power of others" (Gal 1989, p. 16).

2) For this particular profession, the speech community includes the audience; "quite specific bodies of knowledge and values [are] assumed to be shared by speaker and addressees" (Ferguson 1983, p. 156). Consequently, the large audience familiar with sportscaster talk can, or at least feels it can, judge how well Pam Ward does her job. Sportscasting provides a strong example of a set of members of a speech community developing shared norms for a specific, socially-situated setting.

3) Sportscasting talk, as a reflection of masculinity, is a socially constructed genre of speech.

4) Goodwinís concept of coding is particularly relevant to sportscasting. "Coding schemes are one systematic practice used to transform the world into the categories and events that are relative to the work of the profession" (1994, p. 608, from Cicourel 1964, 1968). This theory of "coding" is important to the routines explored below.


Sportscasting as a register: Categories of analysis

Intonational qualities
1) expressive prosody,
2) elongated syllables,
3) accelerated tempo,
4) wide pitch swings, and
5) intonational separation of subject and predicate (Hoyle 1989, p. 47-64).

Syntactic Qualities
1) simplification (elimination of sentence-initial noun phrase or noun phrase plus copula, or post-nominal copula)
2) inversions (of the noun phrase and the predicate)
3) result expressions (in particular, for +noun and to +verb)
4) heavy modifiers (often including a description along with player's name)
5) tense usage (Ferguson 1983, p. 158-68).

Routine Footing (Goffman 1981)


Conclusions
The data allows for only preliminary comparisons between sportscasters.
1) Each announcers' position, be it play-by-play or analyst, creates some amount of intonational and syntactic patterns. The words of these sportscasters suggest that the nature of play-by-play requires more simplification strategies, inversions, and result expressions.
2) However, patterns shared by co-workers indicate that one individual's speech affects that of the other. Pam and Chris used more wide pitch swings and more verbs in the present progressive, while Doc and Sean utilized more heavy modifiers.
3) Furthermore, the data cannot conclusively prove that any of the observed differences are due to gender and not simply individual personalities.

The speech of female sportscasters is indeed worthy of further investigation. There are many unresolved questions about not only the nature of this speech, but its impact:
1) Would another woman sportscaster be different?
2) Would the active work of many female play-by-play announcers impact the register?
3) What happens when a woman uses a traditionally male speech genre: Does it remain a masculine register, or does female use make it neutral?


A Pattern for Future Analysis?
This paper found that one particular feature of televised sportscasting-routines-might provide a useful framework for future research.

These routine images and routine footings are generated by the television format. A crucial role is played by camera operators, who never participate verbally in the discourse and are physically independent from the announcers. Interestingly, both sportscasters and camera operators are focused on the same action and must have similar ideas about how that action should be framed.

This system of coding in part explains the very systematic, predictable structure of actions and talk performed in sports broadcasting. The presence of two sportscasters and camera work create a coordinated construction of the sports broadcasting discourse.

An Example from the Data

Pam begins turn	1	Pam:	Jeff Louis is his backup
	2		second and goal right near the goal line
	3		Wilson continues
heavy modifier	4		in the backfield along with fullback Mo Fofana
elaboration,	5	Chris:	(his big fa' knocker)
in low tone	6		(that's his nickname)

7

((snap))

response

8

Pam:

good call. they give it right to Wilson, touchdown

comments

9

Chris:

oh

yep

Pam ends turn

10

Pam:

West Virginia

A recognition of the routine footing framed by the camerawork provides us with the understanding of why Chris speaks in a low tone (lines 5 and 6) and does not continue talking in line 9: He knows he is impeding on Pam's turn.

This example reveals the potential of this coordinated routine footing to provide a structure for a more in-depth analysis.

Such interaction between Pam and Chris could be interpreted in two ways: On one hand, it seems that he tends to interrupts her, and one wonders whether he would do so to a male colleague. On the other hand, the volume and speed of Chris's words do indicate that he knows when it is not officially his turn; perhaps Pam and Chris are more dynamic in co-constructing meanings of the game. Indeed, the intonational and syntactic evidence suggest that this may be the case. From either perspective, the nature of the interaction between Pam and Chris is somewhat different from that between the other two sportscasters.

Additional Resources



Multimedia Supplemental Materials

Video Clips (Double-click on QuickTime icon in new window to run video clips.)
Clip 1
Clip 2


Links

Pam Ward reviews

www.shoutoutsports.com/Pam%20Ward.htm
www.womenssportsfoundation.org/cgi-bin/iowa/career/article.html?record=6
www.womenssportsfoundation.org/cgi-bin/iowa/career/article.html?record=7
www.allsports.com/cgi-bin/showstory.cgi?story_id=36458
www.awsmonline.org/ward.htm


ESPN

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/tvlistings/index
http://espn.go.com/





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