On the Mediation of Class, Race & Gender: Intonation on Sports Radio Talk Shows

This paper looks at the role of prosody and intonation in the negotiation of social identities on talk-radio. Analysis of tape-recorded interactions between hosts and callers on sports-talk radio call-in shows demonstrates the use of variation in linguistic form to negotiate social identities, while showing how the interactional achievement of identity mediates public discourses of race, class, and gender in American society. Data for this study come from tape-recordings of listener call-in shows aired on Albuquerque's AM sports-talk radio station. Intonational patterns are analyzed instrumentally, using pitch-tracking software implemented on an ffiM-compatible personal computer. The meaning and function of these intonational forms are elaborated through analysis of the interactional and discursive context within which the forms are used. Findings indicate that hosts manipulate their prosodic style as a claim to a particular form of masculinity, and that this claim gains its efficacy by evoking the culturally meaningful trope of liveness. Investigation of the dialogic and intertextual cultural meanings generated by such stylistic variation in language use illustrates change and transformation in American discourses of gender. The discourse of sport in the U.S. is of crucial importance because prominent cultural images, such as masculinity, health, power, success, and free enterprise are metaphorically represented, and thereby mediated through sport.