Rhetoric, Materiality, and the Disruption of Meaning: The Stadium as a Place of Protest

Abstract

<jats:p> Recently, athlete protests about social injustice have garnered much attention from fans and the media. An element frequently overlooked is the role of place in sports protests. Stadiums are iconic markers of identity for communities and play a significant role in the media’s representation of sports games. Informed by Endres and Senda-Cook’s research about place-in-protest, I argue how the Botham Jean and O’Shae Terry protests outside AT&amp;T Stadium in Dallas functioned as place-as-rhetoric to build on the intended purpose of the stadium while temporarily reconstructing its meaning. This material enactment is achieved by the stadium serving as a performative space that authorizes new meaning onto the stadium and surrounding space while heralding it as a champion marker of social justice. I position my analysis within a framework that understands how sports stadiums deploy material rhetoric in ways that produce embodied rhetoric and ephemeral rhetoric that legitimize the Jean and Terry protests as social justice protests. I argue that the stadium functions as place-in-rhetoric to capitalize on its mobilization of fandom in order to amplify social justice messages to a wider audience. </jats:p>

From Save The Crew to Saved The Crew: Constitutive Rhetoric, Myth, and Fan Opposition to Sports Team Relocation

“…With its metal bench seating and concession stands hidden away in dull concrete concourses, the stadium is a strictly functional venue that belies a no-frills, hard-working image of the club best encapsulated in the team’s original logo: a shield with three silhouetted men wearing construction hats with their sleeves rolled-up. In this way, the manner in which the stadium was built, in conjunction with the logo, allows for the stadium to enact further rhetorical symbolism as noted in studies of stadiums as places in Las Vegas, Dallas, New Orleans, respectively (Burroughs et al, 2019; Cavaiani, 2020; Grano & Zagacki, 2011). Mapfre Stadium embodies the meanings of midwestern, blue-collar values, assuming a quintessential American symbolism not typically afforded to soccer venues.…”