Language Games in the Speech of Sports Commentator
This article takes a look at the functions and techniques of language game on the Russian digital satellite TV channel «NTV- Plus» and the way sports commentators apply it to create a spectacular media product responsible for producing a full presentation of televised live sports events. It is shown that language game is most frequently used at phonetic and word-formation levels. The attractive, phatic, compressive, expressive, and characterological functions of the language game are widespread in sports commentaries. The main techniques of a language game in the discourse of the «NTV- Plus» include paronym deformation; modification of precedent names, situations, and utterances; puns based on proper names; and transformed citation.