Football Stadiums and Language Potentialities, Limits and Political-ideological Effects of Metaphorical Expressions

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the potentialities and explanatory limits of metaphorical expressions commonly used to refer to football stadiums, as well as some of their political-ideological effects. At first, I examine the equivalence of football stadiums to battlefields and I argue, among other things, that this tends to legitimize mechanisms of social control. In a second moment, I discuss their equivalence to a prison and I show, among other things, that this tends to lose sight of the new relations between visibility and power. In a third moment, I investigate their equivalence to a shopping center and indicate, among other things, that this hides the fact that social conflicts frequently erupt in the football spectacle. At a fourth moment, I examine their equivalence to a theatre and I suggest, among other things, that this tends to overestimate the differences between the present and the past.