Wrestling Voices: Amplifying Patriotism and Ethnic Stereotypes in 1980s American Professional Wrestling

This article examines the use of promotional interviews (“promos”) in American professional wrestling of the 1980s. I argue that promos introduced a vocal modality into a form of sports entertainment that, as Roland Barthes ([1957] 1972) showed in Mythologies , had always been dominated by visual spectacle. I then undertake a focused linguistic and auditory analysis of promos made by two wrestlers: the Iranian Iron Sheik and his American opponent Hulk Hogan. The analysis shows how voices were made to amplify ethnic stereotypes and patriotic sentiments in constructing the all‐American heroes and foreignized villains that proliferated in, and that helped to legitimize, this era of neoconservative nationalism in American culture and politics.