Cover not available
Part of
The Construction of ‘Ordinariness’ across Media Genres
Edited by Anita Fetzer and Elda Weizman
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 307] 2019
► pp. 179–205

Constructing ‘ordinariness’

An analysis of Jack Ma’s narrative identities on Sina Weibo

| Fujian Normal UniversityChina
| Nanjing Xiaozhuang UniversityChina
In this chapter, we attempt, inspired by Sacks’ (1984) discussion of “doing being ordinary”, to explore and expound the means and purposes celebrities do “being ordinary” on social media and the related notions of narrative in digital communication and narrative identity. These notions are conceptualized with reference to the Chinese business mogul Jack Ma’s means of doing ordinary things vs. doing things ordinarily on Sina Weibo through the social media’s affordance of multimodal resources. What emerges in the course of data analysis is our proposed sense of doing being ordinary, i.e., the observation of the order of things. Our analysis shows that storytelling serves as an important pragmatic strategy in Jack Ma’s doing “being ordinary” on Weibo and that most of Ma’s posts turn out to be “extraordinarily carefully regulated sorts of things” (Sacks 1984: 428), which aim to project, present and/or preserve Jack Ma’s various positive narrative identities.
Keywords: social media, doing being ordinary, impression management, genre, storytelling, narrative identity, identity construction, order of things
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The intricacies of doing “being ordinary”
  • 3.Analytical framework for doing “being ordinary” online
    • 3.1Internet pragmatics and genres
    • 3.2Narrative and narrative identity in digital communication
  • 4.Data
  • 5.Data analysis
    • 5.1Doing “being ordinary” in self-claimed identities
    • 5.2Doing “being ordinary” in projected identities
      • 5.2.1Jack Ma as a business mogul
      • 5.2.2Jack Ma as Alibaba CEO
      • 5.2.3Jack Ma as a football fan
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 12 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.307.08xie
References (62)
References
Alvesson, Mats, and Stefan Sveningsson. 2003. “Managers Doing Leadership: The Extra-Ordinarization of the Mundane.” Human Relations 56(12): 1435–1459. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Atkins, Kim. 2004. “Narrative Identity, Practical Identity and Ethical Subjectivity.” Continental Philosophy Review 37: 341–366. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. by Emerson Caryl, and Holquist Michael. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bamberg, Michael. 2011. “ Who am I? Narration and Its Contribution to Self and Identity.” Theory & Psychology 21: 3–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bamberg, Michael, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. 2008. “Small Stories as a New Perspective in Narrative and Identity Analysis.” Text & Talk 28: 377–396. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bargh, John A., Katelyn. Y. A. Mckenna, and Grainne M. Fitzsimons. 2002. “Can You See the Real Me? Activation and Expression of the ‘True Self’ on the Internet.” Journal of Social Issues 58: 33–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bateman, John A. 2008. Multimodality and Genre. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Baynham, Mike. 2006. “Performing Self, Family and Community in Moroccan Narratives of Migration and Settlement.” In Discourse and Identity, ed. by Anna De Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg, 376–397. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, and Susan Conrad. 2009. Register, Genre, and Style. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2019. Register, Genre, and Style (2nd edn.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Billig, Michael. 1992. Talking of the Royal Family. London: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bruner, Jerome. 1987. “Life as Narrative.” Social Research 54: 11–32.Google Scholar
Burridge, Joseph. 2008. “‘Hunting is Not Just for Blood-thirsty Toffs’: The Countryside Alliance and the Visual Rhetoric of a Poster Campaign.” Text & Talk 28: 31–53. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, Anna. 2016. “Storytelling and Audience Reactions in Social Media.” Language in Society 45: 473–498. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, Anna, Schiffrin Deborah, and Michael Bamberg (eds.). 2006a. Discourse and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 2006b. “Introduction.” In Discourse and Identity, ed. by Anna De Fina, Schiffrin Deborah, and Michael Bamberg, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Fina, Anna, and Alexandra Georgakopoulou. 2008. “Introduction: Narrative Analysis in the Shift from Texts to Practices.” Text & Talk 28: 275–281. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eisenlauer, Volker, and Christian R. Hoffmann. 2010. “Once upon a Blog … Storytelling in Weblogs.” In Narrative Revisited: Telling a Story in the Age of New Media, ed. by Christian R. Hoffmann, 79–108. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1989. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Patricia Bou-Franch, and Nuria Lorenzo-Dus. 2013. “Identity and Impoliteness: The Expert in the Talent Show Idol .” Journal of Politeness Research 9: 97–121. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Georgakopoulou, Alexandra. 2006. “Small and Large Identities in Narrative (Inter)action.” In Discourse and Identity, ed. by Anna de Fina, Deborah Schiffrin, and Michael Bamberg, 83–102. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Grafton, Kathryn. 2009. “Situating the Public Social Actions of Blog Posts.” In Genres in the Internet, ed. by Janet Giltrow, and Dieter Stein, 85–111. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gruber, Helmut. 2019. “Genres, Media, and Recontexualization Practices”. Internet Pragmatics 2(1): 55–83.Google Scholar
Harvey, Laura, Kim Allen, and Heather Mendick. 2015. “Extraordinary Acts and Ordinary Pleasures: Rhetorics of Inequality in Young people’s Talk about Celebrity.” Discourse & Society 26: 428–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan C., Lois A. Scheidt, Elijah Wright, and Sabrina Bonus. 2005. “Weblogs as a Bridging Genre.” Information Technology and People 18(2): 142–171. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan C. 2007. “A Faceted Classification Scheme for Computer-Mediated Discourse.” Language@Internet 4, article 1.Google Scholar
Hyed, Theresa. 2009. “A Model for Describing ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Properties of CMC Genre.” In Genres in the Internet, ed. by Janet Giltrow, and Dieter Stein, 239–262. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kiesler, Sara, Jane Siegel, and Timothy W. McGuire.1984. “Social Psychological Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication.” American Psychologist 39: 1123–1134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, Samuel. G. 1996. “Normalizing Stigmatised Practices: Achieving Co-Membership by ‘Doing Being Ordinary’.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 29: 181–218. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marwick, Alice E., and Danah boyd. 2010. “I Tweet Honestly, I Tweet Passionately: Twitter Users, Context Collapse, and the Imagined Audience.” New Media & Society 13: 96–113.Google Scholar
Miller, Carolyn R. 1984. “Genre as Social Action.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 70: 151–176. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015. “Genre as Social Action (1984), Revisited 30 Years Later (2014).” Letras & Letras 31(3): 56–72. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Miller, Carolyn R., and Dawn Shepherd. 2009. “Questions for Genre Theory from the Blogosphere.” In Genres in the Internet, ed. by Janet Giltrow, and Dieter Stein, 263–290. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ott, Brian L. 2017. “The Age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the Politics of Debasement.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 34: 59–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ottovordemgentschenfelde, Svenja. 2017. “Organizational, Professional, Personal: An Exploratory Study of Political Journalists and Their Hybrid Brand on Twitter.” Journalism 18: 64–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Page, Ruth. 2010a. “Re-examining Narrativity: Small Stories in Status Updates.” Text & Talk 30: 423–444. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.). 2010b. New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2012. Stories and Social Media: Identities and Interaction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2018. Narratives Online: Shared Stories in Social Media. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rowley, Emma 2007. “On Doing ‘Being Ordinary’: Women’s Accounts of BRCA Testing and Maternal Responsibility.” New Genetics and Society 26: 241–250. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sacks, Harvey. 1984. “On Doing ‘Being Ordinary’”. In Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, ed. by J. Maxwell Atkinson, and John C. Heritage, 413–429. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
. 1986. “Some Considerations of a Story Told in Ordinary Conversations.” Poetics 15: 127–138. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schiffrin, Deborah. 1996. “Narrative as Self-Portrait: Sociolinguistic Constructions of Identity.” Language in Society 25: 167–203. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sneijder, Petra, and Hedwig te Molder. 2009. “Normalizing Ideological Food Choice and Eating Practices. Identity Work in Online Discussions on Veganism.” Appetite 52: 621–630. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Somers, Margaret. 1994. “The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach.” Theory & Society 23: 605–649. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Somers, Margaret, and Gloria Gibson. 1994. “Reclaiming the Epistemological Other: Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity.” CRSO Working Paper 25: 937–947.Google Scholar
Stapleton, Karyn, and John Wilson. 2017. “Telling the Story: Meaning Making in a Community Narrative.” Journal of Pragmatics 108: 60–80. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tolson, Andrew. 2001. “‘Being Yourself’: The Pursuit of Authentic Celebrity.” Discourse Studies 3: 443–457. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo. 2004. “Ten Reasons Why Linguists Should Pay Attention to Visual Communication.” In Discourse and Technology: Multimodal Discourse Analysis, ed. by Ronald Scollon, and Philip LeVine, 7–19. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Verschueren, Jef. 1999. Understanding Pragmatics. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
. 2017. “The Pragmatics of Humor in a Serious Story”. ELUA 31: 311–326.Google Scholar
Virtanen, Tuijia. 2017. “Adaptability in New Media.” Journal of Pragmatics 116: 21–26. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walther, Joseph B. 1996. “Computer-Mediated Communication Impersonal, Interpersonal, and Hyperpersonal Interaction.” Communication Research 23: 3–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007. “Selective Self-presentation in Computer-Mediated Communication: Hyperpersonal Dimensions of Technology, Language, and Cognition.” Computer in Human Behavior 23: 2538–2557. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walther, Joseph B., Celeste L. Slovacek, and Lisa C. Tidwell. 2001. “Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words?: Photographic Images in Long-Term and Short-Term Computer-Mediated Communication.” Communication Research 28: 105–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2009. Philosophical Investigations (4th edn.). Trans. by P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Chichester: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Xie, Chaoqun, and Francisco Yus. 2017. “An Internet Dialogue on Internet Pragmatics.” 外国语言文学 [Foreign Language and Literature Studies] 34: 75–92.Google Scholar
. 2018. “Introducing Internet Pragmatics.” Internet Pragmatics 1(1): 1–12. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yus, Francisco. 2011. Cyberpragmatics: Internet-Mediated Communication in Context. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2018. “The Future of Internet Pragmatics.” Plenary speech presented at the 1st International Conference on Internet Pragmatics, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 21–23 September 2018.Google Scholar
. 2019. “An Outline of Some Future Research Issues for Internet Pragmatics.” Internet Pragmatics 2(1): 1–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (6)

Cited by six other publications

Fetzer, Anita
2022. Small stories and accountability of discursive action in mediated political discourse: Contextualisation and recontextualisation of ordinary and not-so-ordinary participants. Frontiers in Communication 7 DOI logo
Lin, Minfen & Doreen D. Wu
2022. Rapport building by Chinese celebrities on Weibo and Facebook. Chinese Language and Discourse. An International and Interdisciplinary Journal 13:1 ► pp. 7 ff. DOI logo
Xie, Chaoqun & Ying Tong
2021. Chapter 7. Inviting a purchase. In Approaches to Internet Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 318], ► pp. 207 ff. DOI logo
Xie, Chaoqun, Francisco Yus & Hartmut Haberland
2021. Introduction. In Approaches to Internet Pragmatics [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 318], ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Xie, Chaoqun
2020. Internet memes we live by (and die by). Internet Pragmatics 3:2 ► pp. 145 ff. DOI logo
Xie, Chaoqun
2022. Internet memes we live by (and die by). In The Pragmatics of Internet Memes [Benjamins Current Topics, 120], ► pp. 7 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.