Departing from the premise that ‘being ordinary’ is brought into the discourse and brought out in the discourse and is thus an interactional achievement, the contributions to this edited volume investigate its construction, reconstruction and deconstruction in media discourse. Ordinariness is perceived as a scalar notion which is conceptualised against the background of both non-ordinariness and extra-ordinariness. The chapters address its strategic construction across media genres (public talk, Prime Minister’s Questions, interview, radio call-in, commenting) and discursive activities (tweets, social media posts) as done in various languages (American English, Austrian German, British English, Chinese, French, Finnish, Hebrew and Japanese) by professional participants (e.g., politicians, journalists, scientists) and by ordinary people participating in media discourse (e.g., ordinary citizens, viewers, members of the audience). Discursive strategies used to bring about (non/extra) ordinariness include small stories, quotations, conversational style, irony, naming and addressing as well as references to the private-public interface.

Why do recordings of speakers engaging in reported speech at British Prime Minister's Questions from the 1970s–80s sound so distant to us? This cutting-edge study explores how the practices of quoting have changed at parliamentary question time in light of changing conventions and an evolving media landscape. Comparing data from authentic audio and video recordings from 1978 to 1988 and from 2003 to 2013, it provides evidence for qualitative and quantitative changes at the micro level (e.g., grammaticalisation processes in the reporting clause) and in more global structures (e.g., rhetorical patterns, and activities). These analytic findings contribute to the theoretical modelling of evidentiality in English, our understanding of constructions, interaction, and change, and of PMQs as an evolving community of practice. One of the first large-scale studies of recent change in an interactional genre of English, this ground-breaking monograph offers a framework for a diachronic interactional (socio-) linguistic research programme.

Internet-mediated communication is pervasive nowadays, in an age in which many people shy away from physical settings and often rely, instead, on social media and messaging apps for their everyday communicative needs. Since pragmatics deals with communication in context and how more gets communicated than is said (or typed), applications of this linguistic perspective to internet communication, under the umbrella label of internet pragmatics, are not only welcome, but necessary. The volume covers straightforward applications of pragmatic phenomena to internet interactions, as happens with speech acts and contextualization, and internet-specific kinds of communication such as the one taking place on WhatsApp, WeChat and Twitter. This collection also addresses the role of emoticons and emoji in typed-text dialogues and the importance of “physical place” in internet interactions (exhibiting an interplay of online-offline environments), as is the case in the role of place in locative media and in broader place-related communication, as in migration.

This volume takes the reader on an exploration in the dynamics underlying digital interaction. The chapters investigate the ways in which individuals shape and interpret intentions, construct identities, and engage in interpersonal exchanges. Online platforms from forums and Wikipedia to Periscope, YouTube and WhatsApp are approached with multifaceted qualitative methods. Aside from English, languages studied include Bangla, Finnish, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Lithuanian, and Norwegian. The range of phenomena, platforms and languages shed light on the complex and nuanced ways of communication in digital spaces.

Sociopragmatics is a rapidly growing field and this is the first ever handbook dedicated to this exciting area of study. Bringing together an international team of leading editors and contributors, it provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge overview of the key concepts, topics, settings and methodologies involved in sociopragmatic research. The chapters are organised in a systematic fashion, and span a wide range of theoretical research on how language communicates multiple meanings in context, how it influences our daily interactions and relationships with others, and how it helps construct our social worlds. Providing insight into a fascinating array of phenomena and novel research directions, the Handbook is not only relevant to experts of pragmatics but to any reader with an interest in language and its use in different contexts, including researchers in sociology, anthropology and communication, and students of applied linguistics and related areas, as well as professional practitioners in communication research.

What is a meme? What is in a meme? What does ‘living in/with memes’ actually mean? What do memes mean to human beings dwelling in a life-world at once connected and fragmented by the internet and social media? Answers to and ways of answering these and other meme questions that arise in social events represent human assistance in or resistance to meaning making. A pragmatic perspective on internet memes as a way of seeing in social life experience offers a unique window on how meme matters in mediated (inter)actions turn out to be inextricably intertwined with human beings’ presencing and essencing in the life-world. Ultimately, this volume seeks to reveal what and how serious if not unsayable concerns can be concealed behind the seemingly humorous, carefree and colorful carnival of internet memes across cultures, contexts, genres and modalities. This book will be of some value to anyone keen on the dynamics of memes and internet pragmatics and on critical insights that can be garnered in kaleidoscopic multimodal communication. Originally published as special issue of Internet Pragmatics 3:2 (2020).

Synthesising diverse research avenues for politics, discourse, and political discourse, this cutting-edge Handbook examines the formative traditions, current theoretical and methodological landscape, and genres and domains over which political discourse extends.