Abstract This paper presents the results of a study seeking insights into how speakers express oppositional stance in an online genre (businesses’ responses to negative customer reviews on TripAdvisor). The research is contrastive, exploring the differences between the practices of speakers in two types of setting – L1 English-speaking countries and countries where English is L2 – when performing oppositional speech acts (e.g. disagreement, criticism of the review/reviewer, etc.). Although there exists a large body of work concerned with contrastive differences in speech act realizations, oppositional speech acts remain under-researched – especially in contexts of non-politeness or impoliteness. This paper presents the results of a mixed-method qualitative/quantitative analysis revealing substantial differences along two principal dimensions of variation: the (in)directness with which opposition is expressed, and the downgrading (mitigation) or upgrading (aggravation) of oppositional speech acts. Some of these differences can be traced to well-known tendencies related to L1 versus L2 language use, while others represent new empirical findings that open up potential avenues for future research.

中文翻译：

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英语中对立言语行为的实现：L1 和 L2 环境中话语的对比分析

摘要 本文介绍了一项研究的结果，该研究旨在深入了解演讲者如何在在线类型中表达反对立场（企业对 TripAdvisor 上负面客户评论的反应）。该研究是对比性的，探讨了在两种类型的环境中说话者的做法之间的差异——L1 英语国家和英语为 L2 的国家——在执行反对性言语行为时（例如，分歧，对评论/评论者的批评等） . 尽管存在大量关于言语行为实现的对比差异的工作，但对立的言语行为仍然没有得到充分研究——尤其是在不礼貌或不礼貌的情况下。本文介绍了混合方法定性/定量分析的结果，揭示了在两个主要变异维度上的实质性差异：表达反对的（间接）直接性，以及对立言论行为的降级（减轻）或升级（加重） . 其中一些差异可以追溯到与 L1 与 L2 语言使用相关的众所周知的趋势，而另一些则代表了新的经验发现，为未来的研究开辟了潜在的途径。