The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews

The Discourse of Online Reviews is the first book to provide an account of the discursive, pragmatic and rhetorical features of this rapidly growing form of technologically-mediated communication. Examining a corpus of over 1,000 consumer reviews, Camilla Vásquez explores many of the discourse features that are characteristic of this new, user-generated, computer-mediated and primarily text-based genre. She investigates the language used by reviewers as they forge connections with their audiences to draw them into their stories, as they construct their expertise and authority on various subjects and as they evaluate and assess their consumer experiences. She also demonstrates how reviewers display their awareness about emerging conventions of the very genre in which they are participating.

This book adopts an eclectic approach to the analysis of discourse, and explores topics such as evaluation, identity and intertextuality as they occur in online reviews of hotels, restaurants, recipes, films and other consumer products.

Camilla Vásquez is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of South Florida, USA.

Acknowledgements
1. An Introduction to Online Reviews
2. Evaluation and Stance in Describing Experience
3. The Discursive Construction of Reviewer Identities
4. Interacting with Others, and with Other Texts: Involvement and Intertextuality
5. Digital Narratives of Personal Experience: Narrative Structures and Dimensions
6. Summary and Conclusion
References
Index

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