Abstract

As a sport fan, it is easy to get caught up in the mood of the crowd leading to various forms of unexpected behavior. Being a part of the crowd can also lead to judicial decisions and civil action. Epideictic rhetoric, the rhetoric of praise and blame, is traditionally connected to official settings and formal situations as a means of unifying a community. However, drawing on the behavior of hockey fans demonstrates that fan behavior is actually a form of epideictic rhetoric. Not only are fans taught the favored virtues of the sport and community, but these virtues then become tools for official decision processes beyond the sporting arena, particularly through the metaphor of sports in conjunction with the rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion. The implications of this classification of fan behavior lies not only in an emphasized importance of fans, but also in the relevance of the common fan to judicial and deliberative acts. Specifically, the actions of fans once thought to be momentary and situated can now take their place as social movement.