Textual Prominence and Cohesion in Selected Commentaries on FIFA World Cup Finals: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective

Authors

  • Samuel Oyeyemi Agbeleoba

    Author

  • Abidemi Jemiriye

    Author

  • Erioluwa George Odonmo

    Author

  • Adeola Omodele Ogunlade

    Author

  • Omowumi Adebola Adeniyi-Agbaje

    Author

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.65676/nnzpt019
Keywords:
prominence, cohesion, FIFA World Cup, football commentary, discourse analysis, Critical Stylistics, evaluative language, information structure
Abstract

This article examines the interplay of prominence and cohesion in FIFA World Cup Finals commentaries, drawing on discourse-analytic frameworks including Critical Stylistics, Systemic Functional Linguistics, and the Discourse-Historical Approach. Through a systematic review of 30 empirical studies on football commentary discourse, this research identifies how commentators deploy lexical, grammatical, and prosodic resources to foreground key moments and players while maintaining textual coherence across the unfolding narrative of live match broadcasts. Findings reveal that prominence is achieved through thematic foregrounding, evaluative lexicalisation, prosodic marking, and repetition, while cohesion is sustained via specialized register, lexical chains, grammatical devices, and discourse markers. The analysis demonstrates that prominence and cohesion operate in dynamic tension: commentators must simultaneously highlight critical events (prominence) and weave them into a coherent narrative thread (cohesion) under severe real-time production constraints. This study contributes to discourse studies by theorizing the prominence-cohesion nexus in constrained, multimodal sports discourse and by synthesizing cross-linguistic evidence on how World Cup commentaries construct meaning, identity, and ideology through language. Implications for genre theory, multimodal discourse analysis, and the study of evaluative language in institutional talk are discussed.

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Issue
Vol. 73 No. 2 (2026): Apr-Jun
Section
Original Research Articles
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How to Cite

Samuel Oyeyemi Agbeleoba, Abidemi Jemiriye, Erioluwa George Odonmo, Adeola Omodele Ogunlade, & Omowumi Adebola Adeniyi-Agbaje. (2026). Textual Prominence and Cohesion in Selected Commentaries on FIFA World Cup Finals: A Discourse-Analytic Perspective. Package Printing, 73(2), 34-48. https://doi.org/10.65676/nnzpt019