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CICE Regional CONFERENCE “GLOBALOCAL CITIZENSHIP”. Visual identities and football symbols. European football logotypes and their internal political and social meaning as creators of collective identities.
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CICE Regional CONFERENCE “GLOBALOCAL CITIZENSHIP” Visual identities and football symbols.European football logotypes and their internal political and social meaning as creators of collective identities Papoutzis Lazaros, Physical Education and Sports Teacher, MSc in Cultural Studies: Semiotics, Undergraduate student in Early Childhood Education, University of Western Macedonia Michailidis Ilias, Physical Education and Sports Teacher, MSc in Cultural Studies: Semiotics, University of Western Macedonia Kyridis Argyris, Professor, Sociologist, University of Western Macedonia Tseneklidis Paris, Undergraduate Student of Special Education, University of Macedonia
Theoretical Frame • In the domain of communicative studies, we focus on the intercultural communication as it is represented on the logotypes of EU Football clubs participating in UEFA’s Champions League. • The tradition of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School is an important source of influence for many researchers: the work of Adorno (1991) and Max Horkheimer’s tradition of cultural criticism supports the theoretical context for this presentation.
Frankfurt School The concept of cultural industry is theory suggested by Adorno and Horkheimer of the Frankfurt School. It postulates that cultural industries exist to impose the ways, the practices and ethics of the Elites. Cultural industry comes as a logical result of the industrial production. It indents to provide escape from the ordinary in a manner that involves the minimum of effort. In this context football and its products (logotypes and their use of symbols) refer to stereotypes and consequently they reconstruct another typology of power and ideology.
Cultural Theory, Communication and Discourse • Cultures are formed through language which is public and social. • Language is used by “speech communities” which differ from subcultures, ethnic groups to social-classes and as a multi-leveled system goes from sounds, words and sentences to longer units called discourses. • Communication and meaning are formed by mediations - symbolic vehicles that "stand for" things, meanings, and values - and as such can be words in a language, images, sounds, or in our case logos.
Logos’ discourse • Discourse is examined by most social studies. • All of our cultural statements and “products” from popular or high culture genres to new emerging cultural forms (football and its products) can be thus studies as part of broader, wider cultural language, as discourse. • In our case we focus on the discourse produced by official football logos and consumed by the football fans-viewers and participants in general.
Methodology We apply the qualitative analysis of Barthes (1957) in order to find out the political and social references to the intercultural communication as it is represented on sports symbols and sports mythologies. Statistic analysis is also applied in order to determine the correlations among local/ethnic/global/international/intercultural symbolisms (coats of arms, national flags, crowns, footballs, laurel wreaths).
Aim • The aim of this study is to reveal the relations among the identities produced and projected by the football teams and citizenship as they appear to the symbols that have been chosen.
Sports as Civilizing process • Norbert Elias approached sports as a necessary product of modernity, by what he refers to as the “civilizing process”. • Elias argues that a major component of sports is the bureaucratic control of violence through the establishment of rules and regulations together with the organizations to enforce them. • According to Elias sports as an element of leisure, are an outcome of industrialization, in that work becomes increasingly differentiated from leisure in a dialectical manner.
Individuals vs Society • Nevertheless sports must have restraints as the wider society does, in order for society to preserve its cohesion. • Sports appear to be a necessary part of modernity that provide society with excitement that gives individuals a liberating experience within the restraints of modern life.
Citizenship and Sports • Citizenship’s aspects involve: a legal status, defined by civil, political and social rights agency, through active participation in a society's institutions membership in a community that renders a distinct source of identity. • Citizenship throughparticipating in sports meets all its three aspects on and off any play ground.
Identities and Sports • The connection between sports and identity can be easily seen in different public events such as the Olympic Games or Champions League. • Pierre Bourdieu has developed a program for the study of sports as a means of understanding social class dynamics. • Thus the ability of sports to bring together various social groups is not only of a great importance but also a focal point in the social study of sports. • In this context we consider about the correlations among identities and citizenship.
Questions Do sports facilitate social integration? In particular does football contribute to the conception of citizenship in its use of local/global symbols? Logos impede or encourage the sense of belonging?
The Data The sample consists of the logotypes of 28 EU Football clubs which is a part of the teams participated in the Champions League Group Stage from 1992 to date. In this paper we present the Iberian and Greek football club logos participated in UEFA Champions League together with the 16 teams participating in the Portuguese national competition in order to find the historical, local, political and global connotations of citizenship.
We focus On the intercultural communication as it is represented on the logotypes of EU Football clubs participating in UEFA’s Champions League. On the symbols produced by religious/politic discourses of power (Foucault, 1969), in our case football teams and the football industry in general. On the identities produced by EU Football teams logotypes.
Case study: Sporting Clube de Braga A variation of Braga’s coat of arms. Reference to the city’s history relating directly the team with the city. Influential political, military and religious connotations framed in a crown decorated with castles. The pieta is ruling the place with a scepter and her son nude. Religious signification is related with the city’s catholic past and present. The mural crown represented the goddess Tyche in ancient Greece and was the embodiment of the fortune of a city. Romans bestowed a mural crown as a military decoration. The city seems to be protected by religion/religious identity and the city's castles meaning the local identity in the frame of national identity.
S. L. Benfica • An eagle to a collaterally aggressive stance with a wingspan, carrying the banner, which is a composite of sports denotation, a diagonal ball with the original SLB and the Latin motto: E pluribus unum, which in Latin means: of many, which is also the motto printed on the U.S. shield. • In this logotype we can read the global signification E pluribus unum that refers to the citizens of the world. • The symbol of the cycle refers to the early cycling history of the city and connotes through the figure of Jose Maria Nicolau, a national heroic signification.
F.C. Porto Direct reference to the crest of the city of Porto with the mythical dragon inside a crown and the religious-historical signifiers over a blue old-fashioned foot ball. The local identity is reprisented trough the city symbols whitch in tern make reference to the history of the town pointing out relegious, political and military signifieds.
Académica de Coimbra Direct reference to the university of Coimbra in a local but academic denotation. In this level we can reed the correlation amongst the students athletic community, the history of the club and the modern football logo
Discussion As it appears, there is a typology of historic symbols produced by religious/politic discourses of power (Foucault, 1969) from the 14th to the 21st century that in nowadays is still used by national presenters in the global/international sports arena in order to communicate meaning to young and adults. In specific these thematics used in EU Football Clubs logotypes highlight their national/international identities. The national-local identities seem to affect the visual options as well as the local-citizenship is influenced by the national-powerful-historic symbols.
Reading about the history of UEFA we remark that the fan-identity is more global since the competitions refer to more Clubs and the elements of the competitions had become more industrial and massive in order to effect many receivers. • In Europe and in particular in Iberian zone, the Logotypes are derived from the local history, the local culture and religion but there are also many global symbols in order to be perceived by the supranational youth.
Results • The local logos refer directly to the city • The religious symbols reveal the traditional identities • The political refer to the medieval history of the nations • The athletic refer to the modern-local-global
Local • It appears that Portuguese and Spanish teams express locality through historic, political, religious and military symbols. • The basic frames represent medieval shields as a reference to war or circles that symbolize union and create a contradiction. It seems that it is not irrelevant the relation between the origin of a football club logo and the choice of its frame (i.e. Academica Coibra).
Global • The eagle and the Olympic circles are global symbols and expand the local identities beyond the national boarders. In this level fans’ identity may also be expanded. • The symbols used in logos appear not to support globality although the football itself is a universal sport cultural element.
