Using the F-measure to test formality in sports reporting : A comparison of the language used in soccer and horse polo articles in two British newspapers

Sammanfattning: This paper investigates the formality level of the language used in twenty articles from two sports that seem to cater to different social classes (soccer and horse polo). The articles that serve as the data were published in two different types of British newspapers, one broadsheet (The Daily Telegraph) and one tabloid (The Daily Express) from September 2010 through November 2017. The study uses a quantitative method by means of the F-measure, and a qualitative analysis of two articles whose results deviate from the rest. The quantitative results show that there is a difference in formality in sports articles on the two sports soccer and horse polo, where articles on polo score higher on the F-measure in both newspapers. Most articles on horse polo follow the pattern of the informational production with features like a high ratio of nouns, pronouns, long words, and adjectives often found in academic papers and legal documents etc. Articles on soccer follow the involved production, characterized by a high ratio of verbs, adverbs, pronouns, and WH-questions often found in spoken interaction. The qualitative analysis shows that the article on soccer which has a much higher F-score than the rest is an informative article on the price of season tickets, and that the polo article with a very low Fscore contained a lot of quoted speech.