Constructing ordinariness in online commenting in Hebrew1 and Finnish

Elda Weizman, Marjut Johansson

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

This chapter studies how 'ordinariness' and mostly 'ordinary' are being constructed in on-line commenting in Hebrew and Finnish. Starting with the premise that "being ordinary" is dynamically and co-operatively constructed, we adopt the notion of "positioning" to account for the ways ordinary commenters position third parties as ordinary and thus "do being ordinary" and the accountability related to it. The study relies on corpus-based methods: using corpora of commenting in each language, the equivalents of 'ordinary', i.e. tavallinen (Finnish), ragil and pashut (Hebrew), are identified and the attitudinal meanings implied by their collocations are examined. The findings indicate that both Hebrew and Finnish commenters position ordinary people in the contexts of politics and politicians, social injustice, social norms, moral and ethics. Culture-specific contexts include military service and orthodox/secular conflicts in Hebrew, self- and other- positioning as having positive qualities coupled with the feeling of being excluded from society in Finnish.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Construction of �Ordinariness� across Media Genres
EditorsAnita Fetzer, Elda Weizman
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company
Pages209-236
Number of pages28
ISBN (Electronic)9789027261977
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019

Publication series

NamePragmatics and Beyond New Series
Volume307
ISSN (Print)0922-842X

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Funding

1. The research of the first author has been supported by a grant from the German Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF Grant I−153-104.3-2017). The research of the first author has been supported by a grant from the German Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF Grant I-153-104.3-2017).

FundersFunder number
German Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development
German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and DevelopmentI−153-104.3-2017

    Keywords

    • Accountability
    • Computer-mediated genre
    • Concordances
    • Corpus-based
    • Ordinariness
    • Ordinary
    • Positioning

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