Structure, Semantics, and Functions of Linguistic Signs in the Television Graphics of Sports Events Broadcasting

The interest in studying the language of sports mass media is explained by the extralinguistic factors, such as social demands and high rates of TV sport programs. Linguistic factors are also significant: people involved in sport use special linguistic means in this sphere of communication, which express sports-related realia. Television graphics is viewed by the author as a subgenre of sport media discourse. Language signs used in the television graphics in sports events broadcasting comprise a unique system which is characterised by its own lexical and syntactic organization. The author of the paper is aimed at describing the structural and semantic features of these linguistic signs with a corresponding reference to their functional peculiarities and extralinguistic background. These factors predetermine the use of thematically various lexis, such as proper names, terminology and commonly used words. The compositional and organizational peculiarities of the television graphics result in the use of headlines, prevailing of notional words, abbreviations, limited use of grammatical words and punctuation. The main method used in the research is the descriptive analysis of form and meaning. The research based on this material is of interest for LSP studies, bases of sports journalism, sociolinguistics, and semiotic studies.