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Rodderick Cedeno Emmanuelli

Professor Gardiakos

ENC 1102

8 February 2022

Analysis of Pressured Rhetorical Bodies

“Pressurized Rhetorical Bodies: Student-Athletes between Feeling Rules and Affective

Publics” by Rich Shivener is an article that analyzes the pressures placed on student athletes as

rhetorical bodies by institutions and the affective publics.

Student athletes are bound to certain limitations and driven to portray themselves and

their situations in certain ways by their institutions. This article highlights the duality of having

student athletes, as rhetorical bodies, be pressured to stray away from talking about anything that

is not positive while affective publics entice them to comment on controversies that their

institutions would not like to be associated with.

This article is a genre for the analysis of the regulation of rhetoric by institutions on

rhetorical bodies, specifically student athletes. This journal being named “Present Tense: A

Journal of Rhetoric in Society” is named in this way because the use of the words “Present

Tense” and “Society” in the name draw readers attention; “Present Tense” implies that the issues

they cover are relevant to the times and “Society” makes the readers feel they will read

something that applies to them as members of society. In order to draw in readers, the journal

name must be fitting and it is. Furthermore, to fit the theme of time relevance, the symbol for the

journal is a stop watch which almost creates a sense of urgency in a reader to check out what is
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being reported on. These methods are in use because without an audience the genres created by

this journal would not gain any traction in terms of popularity and thus readers.

The design of the article page itself is just as good as the name of the journal because

there are minimal distractions from the text which allows the audience to more easily focus on

the ideas being presented by the article. This ability to focus on the article without the presence

of advertisements makes the journal look more credible as well because they care about your

ability to stay focused on the content and participate in the academic discourse concerning

rhetoric.

The article also features a visual venn diagram that illustrates the duality of pressures put

on student athletes as rhetorical bodies by showing examples of the feeling rules they must

follow and the affective publics pressuring them into controversies. For example, the feeling

rules outlined by the University of Cincinnati state “Don’t use social media as an outlet to

complain about your life, teammates, school, etc.” while the reality of the affective publics are

comments such as “Grow up and act like an adult on the court.” posted by @sportsyayarena on

social media which are two opposing pressures on student athletes as rhetorical bodies. Student

athletes are told not to be negative on social media while the affective publics on social media

are consistently antagonizing them to respond. The article’s use of this venn diagram was

extremely useful as a tool for making their readers understand the duality of the two opposing

realities that pressure student athletes.

Since the article is a genre about pressure on rhetorical bodies, they make sure to

emphasize that studying how pressures on student athletes manipulate their rhetoric can help

researchers further understand how similar pressures can manipulate all public rhetorical bodies

in the entirety of rhetoric both digital and physical.

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Student athletes are limited to certain actions and driven to do other ones such as staying

active on social media and only putting out positive messages. This is the reality of a student

athlete who is tied down to an institution despite the fact they are also students with certain

freedoms and rights such as the freedom of speech. This article by Shivener utilizes Penrose’s

article “Tinkering With Success: College Athletes, Social Media and the First Amendment.” to

showcase the legal studies perspective of the issue of pressured rhetorical bodies. Penrose

emphasizes that student athlete conduct has been regulated by their institutions for generations

and is a common practice but also argues that “Student athletes wear two separate hats… one as

a student, where robust First Amendment rights remain, and another as an athlete, where speech

and expression rights have long been regulated by coaches, athletic departments and even

athletic conferences.” which means that despite the long standing regulations on student athletes

it can be argued that they also have the right to their freedom of speech as written in the first

amendment. This type of controversy in the academic conversation is crucial because it affects

the pressures placed on these athletes by their institutions which in turn affects the formation of

their public rhetoric and conduct. Surely, if student athletes were allowed their freedom of

speech, there would be a more realistic representation of their feelings and positions on many

topics especially topics such as protests for racial injustice. Of course, students could just ignore

these limitations as some have done in the past but the ramifications for such a breach of

regulations can include scrutiny from their coaches, school, teammates, classmates, etc.

Naturally, student athletes would want to avoid these consequences as being released from the

team or kicked out of their school can mean the end for their career as athletes and serves as

another reason for why regulations can be enforced so well.

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On the other hand, there is the goal of keeping a “professional cool” in the presence of

such affective publics in place by the institutions regulating student athletes public rhetoric and

discourse. To keep “professional cool'' means to stay calm and positive despite the affective

publics’ attempts to provoke a student athlete into heated arguments where good impressions of

the athlete and associated institutions can be ruined. Shivener’s article makes use of the

statements from the University of Cincinnati’s Athletics department to demonstrate why they feel

it is important to regulate student athletes' public rhetoric. Student Athletes are told “Never

criticize an opposing team, referee, coach, or teammate.”, “Engage and be active on social

media. Don’t go weeks without a post.”, and “Don’t use social media as an outlet to complain

about your life, teammates, school, etc.” (University of Cincinnati Athletics). In the face of

current events such as protests and injustice anyone reading those terms would think they are

unfair or hard to abide by and they would be right. These regulations are set in place by

institutions and their effects on student athletes' rhetoric, among other effects, are being studied

by researchers in the discourse community for public rhetoric. Despite the seemingly unfair

rules, the athletics department has their reasons. The University of Cincinnati views social media

as the “front lawn” of their school and naturally they would want the front lawn of their school to

look appealing for students and potential financiers for the school. By using this source, Shivener

is outlining the reasons for regulation of rhetorical bodies which is crucial to understanding the

dynamics of subsequent formation of rhetoric in terms of the pressures placed upon rhetorical

bodies.

The idea that improper or negative messages from student athletes on social media has an

impact is also emphasized in this article on pressurized rhetorical bodies by Shivener using the

theory presented in Papacharissi’s article “Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and

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Politics” that student athletes responses to issues on social media can create ambient streams that

do not go away and can lead to massive involvement from many people across all platforms. The

idea of an ambient stream is a post for example from a student athlete that evokes an emotional

response from fans which gets streamed through social media and can even amplify the emotions

caused by said post until it becomes widely available and cause issues for the student athlete and

the institution that regulates them. The incorporation of this theory of ambient streams from

Papacharissi is to emphasize that any misstep taken by a rhetorical body can cause a massive

stream of emotions which are ambient meaning they exist everywhere at all times and is

something that can not be easily reversed or dismissed. With the possibility of the creation of

such a negative ambient stream, it shows that such limitations on rhetorical bodies like student

athletes by their institutions with drives towards positive non-provocative messages may be a

necessary method to keeping impressions of certain bodies or organizations positive. Since these

methods may be necessary in the regulation of rhetorical bodies, it is something that needs to be

considered when discussing how pressures affect public rhetoric.

Since the article is concerned with the study of how pressures from institutions and

pressures from affective publics affect the formation of public rhetoric it is important to study

real world examples of this occurring. The use of student athletes regulations on public rhetoric

is a great topic of study for researchers wanting to examine the effects of pressures on rhetorical

bodies because these student athletes are rhetorical bodies themselves with many pressures on

them influencing how they express themselves in public. These pressures include: institutional

regulations which place limits on rhetoric and encourage positive rhetoric, affective publics that

often antagonize student athletes to respond in negative ways which can lead heated arguments,

and the social situations going on in the world that concern particular student athletes such as
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political situations. By studying multiple perspectives of the formation and influences of public

rhetoric researchers can better understand how it forms and that is the goal of this discourse

community.

Works Cited:

Papacharissi, Zizi. Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics. Oxford UP,

2014.

Penrose, Meg. “Tinkering with Success: College Athletes, Social Media and the First

Amendment.” Pace Law Review, vol. 35, 2014, pp. 30-72.

Shivener, Rich. “Pressurized Rhetorical Bodies: Student-Athletes between Feeling Rules

and Affective Publics”. Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society. vol.8 , issue 2. July 17,

2020.

https://www.presenttensejournal.org/volume-8/pressurized-rhetorical-bodies-student-athletes-bet

ween-feeling-rules-and-affective-publics/

University of Cincinnati Athletics. 2019-2020 University of Cincinnati Student-Athlete

Handbook. University of Cincinnati, 27 Aug. 2019, p. 60,

issuu.com/universityofcincinnatiathletics/docs/2019-20_sa_handbook. Accessed 10 Sept. 2019.