Rhetorical uses of public space: the discursive organization of a space in conflict

Abstract

In this paper I explore the discursive use of public space, understood as a rhetorical resource for localized social action. Analysing several extracts of written documents and in-depth interviews, I focus on the rhetorical use of space-formulations and constructions of people-in-place relations by social and institutional agents confronted by the physical definition of a space in conflict. The discursive work includes the rhetorical management of culturally and ideologically organized constructions of urban territoriality, argumentative uses of localized social categories and behaviour-scripts for the performance of normative patterns of coexistence in the public space, and rhetorical work on spatially rooted symbolic processes. The purpose is to contribute to a critical examination of conflictive sociospatial phenomena from a discursive approach, seeking to make visible the social tensions involved in the deliberate attempt to control and organize urban space.