Research On The Characteristic, Function, And Significance Of Television Sports Event Symbol

Television is a kind of media that combine screen image with sound as well as combining verbal symbol with non-verbal symbol together, it acts on both audience’s visual and auditory sense at the same time. TV sports event’s communication can be divided into two parts, one is on the stadium and the other is in the studio. Both of these two parts consist of a large number of communication symbols which contain special meaning. Non-verbal symbol plays a more important role in TV sports event’s communication since it not only contains more meaning, but also makes the TV sports event more attractive and interesting to the audience. Therefore, it’s really a very meaningful and valuable research topic, but the fact is that this research filed is still in its infancy, only a little scholars are studying on it who wrote only a few literature documents, most of which concentrated on three parts: symbol study, TV symbol study, and sports symbol study.By such research methods as consulting literature, text analysis and case analysis, the author investigate and analyze the characteristic, function, and significance of television sports event symbols that play an important role in stadium and in studio one by one. The symbol elements that play an important role in the stadium consist of three parts.The first is the main subjects in sports event and special meaning they contain. For example, the athletes, the referee, the coach, the substitutes, the spectators, the cheerleaders, the mascot, the commentator, and the journalist as well as their costumes, body languages, gestures, the expression in their eyes, their nickname and props.The second is the setting of the stadium and special meaning it contains, such as the field size and field line, the setting of the seats including the setting of ordinary seat and VIP seat as well as home seat and away seat, and the location of the stadium.The third is the lens symbols and special meaning it contains, such as different camera shooting angles, scale of lens, combination of different lens, instant replay, and the trick scene including special lines, charts and the scrolling marquee.While,the symbol elements that play an important role in the studio consist of two parts. One is the main subjects in the studio and their costumes, body languages and so on, the other is the decoration of the studio including the main color, the props, and the special effects.The characteristics of television sports event symbols are authentic and deceptive,time sensitive,figurative,beyond language and culture, associative, symbolic, aesthetic, having diversity of forms, as well as the irreplaceable value of non-verbal symbol.The functions of television sports event symbols include explanation, replacement, metaphor and metonymy, strengthening and weakening, cognition and communication, highlighting personality, stimulating audience’s senses, creating the atmosphere, meeting audience’s different needs, as well as showing the attitudes and ideas of television media.The significances of television sports event symbols include reflecting the characteristics of the sports events, interpreting the spirit of sports, explaining the rules of the games, showing the history and culture of different countries, meeting audience’s different needs and so on.At the end of this research, the author points out some suggestions according to the deficiencies in TV sports event communication, and also some measures that could strengthen the communication effect of TV sports events.