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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. 157–178

Ordinary science

| University College London, UK
Science journalism entails an orientation to the interests and understandings of ordinary audiences. The key challenge for journalists is to present the research reported as newsworthy and translate complex findings to understandable terms. This study examines interviews with scientific experts conducted in the Israeli current affairs program London et. Kirschenbaum, focusing on discursive strategies used by presenters to align with the interests and knowledge of their audiences. The doing of “being ordinary” emerges as a key resource for allocating the translation of scientific knowledge between expert guests and the presenters themselves. In doing so, they are shown to shift between knowers or ignorants of the topic reported in a way that reflects their public personae and their task of making science accessible and relevant. Doing ordinariness appears to involve translational, epistemic and biographic dimensions that resonate with the interactional but also broader contexts in which reporting takes place.
Keywords: Ordinariness, Science Communication, News Interviews, Conversation Analysis, Epistemics, Biography
Article outline
  • 1.Science and the public
  • 2.Ordinariness and popular television
  • 3.London et Kirschenbaum
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Knowledge and ignorance
    • 4.2Science and common-sense
    • 4.3Research and us
  • 5.Life and presentation
  • Acknowledgments
  • References
  • Appendix
Published online: 12 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.307.07arm
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Weizman, Elda & Anita Fetzer
2021. The discursive construction of accountability for communicative action to citizens: A contrastive analysis across Israeli and British media discourse. Intercultural Pragmatics 18:5 ► pp. 605 ff. DOI logo

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