Defining Sport Communication

Andrew C. Billings

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138909601
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317437918
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Defining Sport Communication is a comprehensive resource addressing core topics and issues, including humanistic, organizational, relational, and mediated approaches to the study of sport communication. It provides foundational work in sport communication for students and scholars, reflecting the abundance of research published in recent years and the ever-increasing interest in this area of study.

Bringing together scholars from various epistemological viewpoints within communication, this volume provides a unique opportunity for defining the breadth and depth of sport communication research. It will serve as a seminal reference for existing scholarship while also providing an agenda for future research.

PART I

Humanistic Approaches to Sport

1

SPORT AS RHETORICAL ARTIFACT

Michael L. Butterworth

OHIO UNIVERSITY

Arguably the oldest of academic disciplines, rhetoric’s origins date back to the 6th century BCE (Ricouer, 1997). It truly came of age in ancient Greece and was later institutionalized as part of the original three liberal arts, along with grammar and dialectic, known together as the trivium (Booth, 2004). In the 21st century, rhetoric maintains a strong disciplinary identity in both communication studies, featuring a tradition grounded in public address, and English, featuring a tradition grounded in composition. Yet, despite this rich history and continued currency, rhetorical scholars have only very recently begun to take sport seriously as a site of inquiry.

On the one hand, this is of little surprise, given that the development of rhetorical criticism as a method in the 20th century was animated by a focus on political speakers and speeches. From this view, scholarship largely appropriated the vocabulary of Aristotle and, to a lesser degree, Cicero, in the effort to evaluate “rhetorical discourse in terms of its effects on its immediate audience” (Black, 1978, p. 31). Such an approach necessarily privileges more formal political arenas and discourse, often at the expense of communicative forms residing within the popular or vernacular.

On the other hand, the bifurcation of the political and the popular neglects the various ways they implicate one another, something evident when the subject is sport. Indeed, from its emergence as a form of persuasive discourse in antiquity, rhetoric was linked overtly with sport. Rhetoric’s earliest practitioners, the Sophists, engaged in a project characterized by the dissoi logoi, a principle that spotlights the “double argument” entailed in any discourse. As Crick (2014, p. 187) explains, “Dissoi logoi is not simply a statement that people disagree; it emphasizes that productive action must be preceded by thoughtful debate, criticism, and advocacy that draw on the wealth of available knowledge to produce warranted assertions.” In other words, rhetoric is defined by an agonistic attitude that can be understood as a kind of contest or competition. Poulakos (1995) connects this attitude explicitly to the sporting context of the time:

Normalized and internalized through the organization of the Olympic Games, this institutionalized form of cultural activity shaped sophistical rhetoric in its image, making public discourse a matter of competition. In turn, sophistical rhetoric pushed competition beyond the boundaries of the stadium and into the rhetorical forums of the court and the Assembly.

(pp. 32–33)

Hawhee (2005) expands on this connection, again stressing that rhetoric and sport—in her terms, athletics—are mutually invested in agonism:

Concerning the contest between rhetoric and athletics, a comment by Gorgias underscores my point about the importance of the encounter of the agōn. In an extant fragment of a speech delivered at the Olympic Games, Gorgias explicitly places athletics and rhetoric next to each other: “A contest (agōnisma) such as we have requires double excellence (dittōn areitōn): daring (tolmēs) and skill (sophia). Daring is needed to withstand danger, and skill to understand how to trip the opponent (pligma). For surely speech, like the summons at the Olympic Games, calls the willing but crowns the capable.”

(pp. 29–30)

Importantly, Hawhee observes that competition is not an end in and of itself. Rather, agonism privileges the sense of community cultivated by the contest. As she notes, “The Olympic Games . . . depended on the gathering of athletes, judges, and spectators alike. Agora, the marketplace, shares the same derivative and a strikingly similar force of meaning as agōn, and, as is commonly known, functioned as the ancient gathering place par excellence” (Hawhee, 2005, p. 15). Later, Roman emperors Nero and Domitian included oratorical contests in athletic festivals inspired by the Greek Olympic Games (Kyle, 2014).

Both rhetoric and sport developed in the same era as a third significant contribution from ancient Greek society: democracy. Timmerman and McDorman (2008, p. xiii) assert the relationship between rhetoric and democracy is “a necessary one, in the sense that democracy is impossible without the practice of public discourse and dialogue among citizens.” Moreover, defining democracy in rhetorical terms once again implies the presence of contestation and competition. All of which is to say that rhetoric, sport, and democracy are connected—and have been connected historically—in substantial ways. The shared agonism of rhetoric, sport, and democracy has implications for contemporary rhetorical studies. No longer restrained by academic conventions limiting subject matter to speakers and speeches, rhetorical critics now attend to a range of discursive forms, from social movements, to films, to monuments and memorials. Increasingly in the past decade or so, sport can be added to this list. With this in mind, it is useful to outline the general commitments of contemporary rhetorical theory, especially as they hail the classical practices I have detailed above. In doing so, we can begin to chart the trajectory of recent scholarship that views sport as a rhetorical artifact.

In their book, Contemporary Rhetorical Theory, Lucaites and Condit (1998) suggest that contemporary rhetorical scholars borrow from the classical tradition in four important ways. First, rhetoric is understood as persuasive discourse. In contrast to ancient philosophers, who viewed ‘truth’ as an inherent property for which words were merely a vehicle of communication, classical rhetoricians believed “especially in the context of social and political affairs, the manner and form of discourse was integral to the ‘truth’ of the thing being described and played a central role in shaping collective identity and action” (Lucaites & Condit, 1998, p. 3). In other words, rhetoric acknowledges that symbols are manipulated for a particular effect. Second, rhetoric takes place in public. Given the democratic context of ancient Greek society, citizens needed a means through which they could deliberate and make decisions. Thus, the “emphasis on public discourse focused attention on communicative acts that affected the entire community” (Lucaites & Condit, 1998, p. 3). Third, rhetoric operates in situations of contingency. Given the imperfections of both people and language, rhetoric allows for an assessment of the probable over the certain. As Lucaites and Condit (1998, p. 2) conclude, “The best we can do is to make reasoned decisions based upon our knowledge of the past and the likelihood of future possibilities.” Fourth, rhetoric is contextual, meaning that what is persuasive for one audience at a given point in time may not be persuasive for another audience at a different point in time. Accordingly, “The capacity for meaning in any linguistic usage is almost always subject to change and adaption” (Lucaties & Condit, 1998, p. 4).

Although few contemporary rhetorical critics frame their scholarship explicitly in the four characteristics I’ve identified above, they nevertheless are likely influenced by these core concepts. With these principles in mind, then, I want to attend to the ways scholars have conceptualized sport as a rhetorical phenomenon. I cannot claim to be exhaustive here, but I maintain that rhetorical studies of sport can be organized around four primary themes: (1) public address in sport, especially through instances of image repair; (2) sport as metaphor and the use of metaphor in sport; (3) rhetorical approaches to mediated representations in sport; and (4) rhetorical interpretations of the myths communicated by sport.

Public Address in Sport

Studies of public address may no longer be the dominant form of rhetorical inquiry, but they nevertheless retain a prominent place in the field. For scholars interested in sport, public address is most commonly studied in terms of apologia and image repair (see Chapter 22). Apologia is a rhetorical genre defined as “a public speech of self-defense” (Ware & Linkugel, 1973). Early studies (Kruse, 1981; Nelson, 1984) focused on high-profile athletes attempting to recover from public relations mistakes. The context for those studies—the 1970s and 1980s—shares much in common with the contemporary era. The claim that sport “has such a pervasive effect upon the lives of so many” (Kruse, 1981, p. 283), for example, remains one of the primary reasons for the communicative study of sport. The significance of this statement, however, is also found in the ways that today’s sporting context is exponentially larger, louder, and more pervasive. Accordingly, we find ourselves in an era of intense scrutiny of athletic figures, both within their respective sports and their larger communities. Thus, recent years have seen a growing interest in this area of scholarship, especially as it intersects with the theory of image repair.

Image repair, previously known as image restoration, is an approach to apologetic discourse largely attributed to the work of Benoit (1997, 2015). Benoit’s framework builds on the theory of apologia and establishes a set of possible responses for crisis situations. As he defines it, “Image repair discourse is a persuasive message or group of messages that respond(s) to attacks or suspicions that promote a negative attitude about the source of image repair” (Benoit, 2015, p. 10). His approach has been highly generative, including for scholars in communication and sport. This is best exemplified by a full collection of essays, Repairing the Athlete’s Image (Blaney, Lippert, & Smith, 2013). As Blaney (2013) details, image restoration can occur across five broad strategies: deny wrongdoing, evade responsibility, reduce the seriousness of the offense, offer corrective action, or ask for forgiveness. In recent years, a range of high-profile athletes—Lance Armstrong, Kobe Bryant, Hope Solo, Serena Williams, Tiger Woods, and so forth—have been involved in actions or events that have prompted a need to repair their image.

Brazeal’s (2013) study of Serena Williams offers a good example of how a rhetorical critic might approach image repair. Williams found herself needing to apologize after an “on-court meltdown” during the 2009 U.S. Open, during which she berated a line judge so forcefully that she received a point penalty that ultimately gave her semifinal opponent, Kim Clijsters, the victory (Brazeal, 2013, p. 239). The ferocity of Williams’ outburst warranted an apology, but she was reluctant to take accountability when questioned in the post-match press conference. It took two written statements for Williams to offer an apology, by which time she had faced considerable criticism. Based on this case of inadequate image repair, Brazeal (2013, pp. 249–250) concludes that “the timing of the apology is critical to its success,” “athletes must understand the culture of their particular sport and be willing to embrace its values,” and “athletes should be firm in their stand against rehashing their failings for the press.”

Image repair scholarship largely follows a traditional model of rhetorical criticism primarily interested in single speakers, speeches (or formal statements), and potential influence on a specific audience. To that extent, it is appropriate to place image repair in the context of this chapter. At the same time, image repair studies might align more strongly with public relations scholarship, which is generally less interested in rhetoric’s democratic commitments and more in its instrumental capacities. Thus, more commonly, contemporary theorists are invested in rhetoric’s constitutive capacities. This approach, most often associated with the work of Charland (1987), views rhetoric’s effects as less direct and more ideological. Scholarship about sport from this perspective commonly addresses use of metaphor, issues of representation, and articulations with common mythologies. These themes necessarily intersect and overlap with other areas, including many of those addressed in this volume. My aim here, then, is to spotlight these themes in the cases when they are specifically understood in rhetorical terms, with the open recognition that no one approach can claim ownership of these complicated and important issues.

Metaphor in Sport/Sport as Metaphor

Nietzsche (1989, p. 250) famously declared, “What is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short, a sum of human relations which were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, and adorned, and after long use seem solid, canonical, and binding to a nation.” This passage, itself built from metaphor—“a mobile army”—reminds us that human language evolves from ambiguity to a sense of certainty over time. Metaphor, one of Burke’s four “master tropes,” is therefore a powerful rhetorical resource, for the repeated use of metaphorical language can lead to its naturalization, a belief that meaning is fixed in the term itself. On the one hand, metaphor is a relatively simple concept. Burke (1941, p. 421) defines it as “a device for seeing something in terms of something else.” This understanding is helpful, especially to the degree that metaphor is used to make language more interesting and vibrant. In addition, metaphor’s creativity assists in the construction of arguments (Foss, 2009).

Thinking of metaphor as a rhetorical device of argumentation returns us to rhetoric’s constitutive function. In American culture, this is especially true with respect to metaphors that feature sport. As Segrave (2000) notes, “The idea of sport as a metaphor for life . . . is so common in America and American literature that it has become part of our conventional wisdom.” In particular, he identifies sports such as baseball, boxing, and football as the most familiar vehicles for describing arenas such as “warfare, politics, business and sexual relations” (p. 48). His study is both descriptive and evaluative. For instance, he identifies common phrases used in business or sex—“take the bull by the horns,” “get to first, second, or third base”—that are designed to add variety or provide a way of talking about subjects that might be frowned upon in polite company. Moving beyond this initial level, Segrave (2000) also acknowledges the limits of metaphor, noting that the sport/war intersection can “sanitize the cruelties of war” (p. 50) or that reducing sex to sport transforms “a profound and delicate human relations issue into a problem of strategy” (p. 56).

Other rhetorical studies have provided extended analyses of these metaphorical limits in areas such as politics. Anderson (2011, p. 329) notes that the “most common procedural frame for political campaigns is the game or strategy frame, which structures campaign news ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Defining Sport Communication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• Defining Sport Communication: An Introduction to a Nuanced Field
• PART I Humanistic Approaches to Sport
• PART II Organizational/Relational Approaches to Sport
• PART III Mediated Approaches to Sport
• Index