Doing being an average teenager

Deploying ordinariness as subversive disability performance in presentational media

Bibliographic Data

ID2879692
AuthorsXiaowei May Li (0009-0007-4501-7876, University of Hong Kong, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume54
Issue3
Pages439-464
Publication date2025-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage in Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0047404524000368
OpenAlexW4396675719
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited51

Scholars have shown how speakers are inclined to discursively position themselves as 'ordinary' in order to claim and benefit from membership in a socially unmarked category, and that the effect of 'being ordinary' is an effortful communicative achievement (e.g. Sacks 1984). This study re-examines and extends such insight by focusing on socially marked individuals-people with disabilities-and considers the effect of inhabiting a nonnormative body has on the semiotic production of self as ordinary. The multimodal self-presentation of Nikki Lilly, a popular disabled YouTuber, showcases the tension between inhabiting a physically anomalous body and projecting 'an average teenager' persona. The analysis of the vlogger's YouTube and Instagram posts shows that resignifying the nonnormative body and self as symbolically unmarked hinges on recruiting hypernormative gendered resources. I argue that by exaggerating normality, Nikki Lilly's recognized 'ordinary' self-presentation enunciates normalcy as an illusory imperative and materializes as subversive the performance of disability. (Nikki Lilly, embodiment, multimodality, presentational media, disability, ordinariness, normativity

Advertising · Aesthetics · Art · Business · Presentational and representational acting · Sociology · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · Gender Studies in Language · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Psychology

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