“Making waves” with burke: Surf Nazi culture and the rhetoric of localism

Abstract

Surfers have long engaged in practices of intimidation and exclusion in order to maintain their territorial control of waves. One consistent response of surfers to such practices is the writing of letters that are published in surfing magazines. Collectively, such actions provide an opportunity for a Burkeian analysis of myth, culture, and ideology. The study first describes the historical and cultural contexts of these exclusionary practices through the use of a representative anecdote. The study then analyzes surfers' rhetorical responses, describing how rhetors use economic and religious metaphors to position ideologies that both reproduce and mediate cultural myths of perfection through the redemptive strategies of scapegoating and mortification.