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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 24, No. 0, pp.632-659
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2024
Received 02 May 2024 Revised 19 Jun 2024 Accepted 05 Jul 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.24..202407.632

Between the Hoops: A Linguistic Examination of Media Biases Among Filipino Sportscasters

Joram Kim B. Corcuera ; Alejandro S. Bernardo
(1st author and corresponding author) Ph.D. Candidate, Graduate School Assistant Professor Department of English Faculty of Arts and Letters University of Santo Tomas jbcorcuera@ust.edu.ph
(co-author) Full Professor Department of English Faculty of Arts and Letters University of Santo Tomas asbernardo@ust.edu.ph


© 2024 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

In the field of linguistics, sports is one of the domains left unexplored. As a result, the study of the language of sports continues to be a relatively neglected area. Moreover, there also exists a scarcity of studies examining media biases across different domains and sectors. In order to fill this gap, this study is primarily aimed at identifying the various forms of media biases present in Filipino sportscasts and exploring how nationalistic positioning influences these biases in local sports broadcasts. In examining the language of sportscasting, a qualitative approach was employed to uncover the lexico-semantic, discourse and pragmatic constructions of these media biases. Data used in this study came from the transcribed coverages of the games of the Philippine Men’s Basketball Team, during the 19th Asian Games. Specifically, the study corpus was taken from the local sports coverage of One Sports+, which was accessed through the Pilipinas Live application. Furthermore, manual qualitative coding was conducted to identify various types of media biases. The occurrences of media biases in the study corpus were also tabulated and examined. Findings of the study underscores the significant impact of nationalistic positioning on the language choices of sportscasters. Moreover, the analysis also uncovered pervasive media biases across all examined games, with local sportscasters predominantly favoring athletes from the Philippine team despite their efforts to maintain neutrality. These biases, which are likely the result of sportscasters’ connections to their home country, underscore the difficulty of maintaining objectivity in the face of audience expectations during live sports broadcasts. Furthermore, this study emphasizes the importance of understanding diverse linguistic cues that influence audience interpretation of the sportscasters’ commentaries. Findings of the study also suggest potential areas for future research which are focused on understanding the roles of media biases in sports media.

Keywords:

sports linguistics, sportscasting, media biases, Gilas Pilipinas, basketball

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