ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some of the recent work relating to the concept of ordinariness in the context of reality television, and linguistic theories of performance more generally, is discussed subsequent analysis of extracts from the TV shows. It discusses the participation of 'ordinary' people in three reality TV series: Big Brother, Wife Swap and Come Dine with Me. The chapter focuses on three ritualised contexts: talking to Big Brother in the Diary Room, discovering the new home and the wife's manual in Wife Swap, and reading and commenting on the evening's menu in Come Dine With Me. These contexts involve specific discursive actions in each case: confessional self-disclosure, the construction of identity through processes of 'othering' and assessment and evaluation. In all three cases, the chapter also explores what is centrally at stake is the performance of an identity that serves the local purpose, be it of competition, of conflict, or of entertaining, characterful eccentricity.
