Millions of people around the world are engaged in sports and games. This volume studies the ways in which engagement is performed in popular culture. We do not just watch football – we perform by being a fan. NBA players do not simply run up and down the court. Instead, on and off the court they perform certain roles, many informed by hip hop culture. Such performances are rhetorical: they manage attitudes, behaviors, and predispositions, influencing the distribution of power. Competitive hot dog eaters, bull riding, and Mexican wrestlers are some of the other sports and games covered by the contributors. The book is unique in bringing together the three themes of sports and games, performance, and the rhetoric of popular culture, and is relevant for both scholarly use and classroom adoption in courses ranging from sport and society, rhetoric, composition, persuasion and argument, and popular culture.
The Editor: Barry Brummett is the Charles Sapp Centennial Professor of Communication and Department of Communication Studies Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of several books and articles, including A Rhetoric of Style (2008).
Contents: Linda K. Fuller: Foreword: Sport Communication Linked with Linguistics – Barry Brummett: Introduction: Sports, Games, Rhetoric, Performance, and Politics – Rachel Kraft/Barry Brummett: Why Sport and Games Matter: Performative Rhetorics in Popular Culture – Roger Gatchet: The Rhetoric of Monstrosity in Professional Sports Controversy – Sunshine P. Webster: It Is a Girl Thing: Uncovering the Stylistic Performance of Female Athleticism – Carlnita P. Greene: Towards a Rhetoric of Nostalgia and Cultural Memory: Silver League Base Ball and the Performance of the Past – Luke Winslow: Bull Riding and the Performance of Masculinity – Jaime Wright: Performing Perfection, or, How to Be a Ninja Warrior – Alexis Carreiro: Rollergirls: Superhero Rhetoric in Post-Feminist Television – Jay P. Childers: Going All In on the Global Market: The Rhetorical Performance of Neoliberal Capitalism on ESPN’s World Series of Poker – Laura Barberena: Lucha Libre: Mexican Wrestlers and the Portrayal of Politics in the Arena – K. Jeanine Congalton: Competitive Eating as Sport: A Simple Recipe for Everyone – Kevin A. Johnson: Hip-Hop, the NBA, and Street Basketball: The Rhetorical Dimensions of Performance at the Intersection of Class, Race, and Popular Culture – Timothy R. Steffensmeier: Sacred Saturdays: College Football and Local Identity – Meredith M. Bagley: Performing Social Class: The Case of Rutgers Basketball versus Don Imus.
