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The Construction of ‘Ordinariness’ across Media Genres
Edited by Anita Fetzer and Elda Weizman
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 307] 2019
► pp. 269–294

When being quotidian meets being ordinary

| Stanford University, USA

Building on previous studies of casual conversations by older Japanese women in which quotidian reframing was used as a strategy to present serious and extraordinary situations from the perspective of the quotidian (e.g. Matsumoto 2011), this chapter examines how reframing to the quotidian, i.e. “doing being quotidian,” participates in the construction of ordinariness in verbal interactions in mass media and social networks in the U.S. and Japan. Through analyses of the interaction of a veteran host of a Japanese talk show with a guest, two former U.S. Presidents’ presentations of themselves at public events, and postings on a Japanese political party’s Twitter account, we consider psychological and social conditions and effects of quotidian reframing in media.

Keywords: ordinariness, media, frame, quotidian, reframing, emotion regulation, Japan, U.S.A
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Construction of being quotidian in natural conversations
    • 2.1Quotidian reframing
    • 2.2Quotidian (re)framing in older Japanese women’s conversational narratives
  • 3.Construction of being quotidian in media
    • 3.1Japanese talk show host with her guest
    • 3.2Former U.S. President Nixon after a bill-signing ceremony
    • 3.3Former U.S. President Obama during his second-term campaign
    • 3.4Tweets by the constitutional democratic party during a general election in Japan
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgment
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.307.11mat
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