Discursive construction of ordinariness in political discourse

Part of the lecture series and collaborative interdisciplinary research project "Democratisation and Power Structures". This paper examines the discursive construction of ordinariness in the context of British political discourse. The analysis focuses on politicians assigning ordinary-life experience the status of an object of discourse, and on their ‘doing ordinariness’ in the mediated political arena. To bring ordinary-life experience into discourse, politicians may use quotations, sometimes embedded in small stories, and to ‘do ordinariness’ they may use colloquial language. The paper shows that the discursive construction of moments of ordinary-life experience in a non-ordinary-life context is done strategically to align with the audience as a whole or with particular sub-groups. ‘Doing ordinariness’ in a non-ordinary context is done with the use of ordinary-life anchored concepts, such as ‘people’, not talking about ‘government’ any longer but rather of ‘the people’s government’.