Enhancing Access to the Matchday Experience: Considering the Role and Purpose of Audio Descriptive Football Commentary

This research aims to expand on the knowledge of football ADC, an underexplored type of AD. It builds this exploration in relation to another type of football commentary aimed at audiences without visual access to the game - radio commentary. It is an interdisciplinary, empirically-grounded piece of research that draws on mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, some frequently used in psychology. In this first chapter, I argue that some of the assumptions about AD are problematic in relation to ADC because of the specific nature of the source text in ADC, and what that means about for the assumptions that underpin the guidelines for AD. In live football ADC, the mediation between what happens during the match and the listener of the mediation has similarities with radio: both types of commentators use an unscripted verbal delivery to translate what the listeners cannot see; in the case of radio because the listeners are not in the venue; in the case of ADC, because the listeners are BPB. What needs to be translated is understood generally in translation as the source text. One of the principal aims of this thesis lies in elucidating what exactly this text is. Is it the continuous play over the 90+ minutes of the match or does it entail much more? Does the verbal replace the visual so that, as an audio description user claims, he has his ‘sight back for 90 minutes’ (Morgan, 2018)? It could be argued that the source text in a football match entails not only the action on the pitch but the sensory experience of the match itself. However, for fans at the stadium, non-visual sensory experiences such as ‘the smell of the pies, the roar of the crowd’ associated with the match day experience (RNIB 2009, p.14) or the spatial experience of moving about the stadium can be perceived by the matchgoer; radio listeners, on the other hand, do not have access to those elements of the match-day experience. Thus, relevant aspects surrounding the football matchday experience and fans are examined, to explore what impact these features might have in the delivery of commentary. All this has informed a series of empirical studies looking at different perspectives and agents, which will be presented in the following four chapters. Chapter 2 explores the processes at work of football audio describers and radio commentators. It uses an online questionnaire using fixed and free-text responses to examine several research questions: i. What is the overall aim of commentary for ADC describers and radio commentators? ii. What are the most important elements to be described on the pitch and around the stadium? iii. What is the role of partisanship? iv. What is the role of specialised language? A mixed-methods approach is used to analyse the replies to the questionnaire, with quantitative and qualitative methods used in psychology. The quantitative data is mainly collected using the rating (Likert) scales while template analysis is applied to the qualitative data arising from free-text responses. Chapter 3 is a corpus study examining the textual similarities and differences between ADC and radio. A coding model is devised to quantitatively explore the texts considering three main aspects: i. How closely does commentary follow the football event? ii. What is the language distribution in terms of a. objective/non-objective language? b. general/specialised language? iii. What is the semantic composition of commentary? Inferential texts are used to identify similarities and differences between the two types of commentary. Chapter 4 is a corpus study which explores the same research questions as Chapter 3 and uses the same coding model as chapter 3. In this case, it explores similarities and differences between a dedicated ADC and another form of access provision (e.g., clubs’ own app-based audio feed). Inferential texts are used to identify similarities and differences between the two types of commentary. Chapter 5 explores the experiences of BPB and sighted fans of a football match, as well as their radio listening experience. For BPB fans only, their instadium commentary experience is also examined. This study uses a mixed methods approach. An online questionnaire which includes fixed-response questions using Likert scales will provide the quantitative data for the inferential tests. The free-text questions will provide the basis for the qualitative analysis, using template analysis. This study tries to elucidate how fans engage with the experience of a football game, both in raw and mediated forms, in order to understand how commentary translates the experience of attending a match. The main research aims to respond to the following research questions: i. What is the experience of attending a football match, a. with a focus on what contributes to the atmosphere of a football game? b. with a focus on the most emotionally charged moments? ii. What is the radio listening experience like? iii. For BPB only, what is the ADC experience like? Chapter 6 consists of the discussion about the overall thesis question and includes the conclusions, which consider the implications of this research and suggests future research avenues.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

PhD thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Westminster

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Pedregosa, Inma

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Caink, A.D.
• Eardley, A.F.
• Bywood, L.

Identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x67qx

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x67qx