Speaking dramatically

Live commentaries of football matches provide a rich source for the analysis of verbal constructions of drama and suspense. In this paper, I will show how radio reporters construct and employ the different speech styles “building up suspense” and “presenting a climax” for the contextualization of specific verbal actions. Both speech styles are used for dramatic descriptions of events on the soccer field but they feature different sets of prosodic characteristics. Whereas “building up suspense” displays a continuous rise of fundamental frequency across units, relatively narrow pitch range within units, and an absence of pauses within and between units as the most relevant features, “presenting a climax” exhibits a considerable deceleration of articulation rate, with extremely lengthened nuclear syllables. Furthermore, it will be argued that both types of dramatic speech style differ significantly from speech styles used for the presentation of background information on the match.