“CALL DOC SINGH!”: TEXTUAL STRUCTURE AND COHERENCE IN LIVE TEXT SPORTS COMMENTARIES JAN CHOVANEC, MASARYK UNIVERSITY,BRNO Abstract The article deals with coherence in the language of online sports reporting (also known as live text commentary), arguing that an understanding of this particular text type is closely related to the readers’ awareness of the specific textual structure of the match commentary. For their coherence, the texts rely on the ability of the readers to interpret certain utterances by placing them correctly within the overall structural framework of the text. In order to make sense of such match reports, readers must be aware that the commentary proceeds along two narrative layers–the primary layer of the game description and the secondary layer of interpersonal gossip. The latter layer may be unrelated to the sports game being reported and may develop several parallel topic lines constituted by utterances threaded together by various cohesive ties. Thanks to their being co-constructed by means of comments emailed by readers and cited by the journalist, the texts of this particular kind of online sports commentary assume pseudo- dialogic properties. As a result, this text type manifests some properties characteristic of chat discussions and other kinds of computer-mediated interaction. 1 Introduction The phenomenon of live text commentary as an online genre of sports reporting has come to the attention of linguists only very recently. Chovanec (2006), for instance, deals with the dialogical nature of online minute-by-minute match reports, noting that the interactions between the commentator and the audience typically manifest elements of verbal contest. The competitiveness is interpreted as a sign of male gossip (cf. Chovanec, Jan (2009) "Call Doc Singh!": Textual Structure and Coherence in Live Text Sports Commentaries. In: Dontcheva-Navratilova, Olga and Renata Povolná (eds.) Coherence and Cohesion in Spoken and Written Discourse. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 124-137. ISBN 1-4438-1308-7.