Abstract
This article presents a multifaceted comparative investigation into the linguistic impoliteness in the negative online consumer reviews on one of the world’s largest e-commerce tycoons and the flagship giant Amazon. The findings were derived from 600 items of online consumer reviews from two comparative perspectives: cross-language (English vs. Chinese) and cross-sector (daily necessities vs. luxury goods). Four impoliteness strategies were identified, calculated and illustrated based on the collected dataset, ranging from January 2016 to October 2018. Findings indicate that in terms of decreasing frequency, the impoliteness strategies reviews are positive impoliteness, implicated impoliteness, negative impoliteness and sarcasm in the negative online consumer reviews of both languages and both sectors. The results reveal that, regardless of sector and language differences, on-record impoliteness is much more frequent than off-record impoliteness in the genre of online consumer reviews. Despite of similarities, discrepancies were also found with regard to the employment of impoliteness strategies in online consumer reviews across languages and sectors. As a timely effort, the findings offer impoliteness-related insights and implications to both theorists and practitioners in the e-commerce industry.
About the authors
Wei Feng is Associate Professor of linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, Shanxi province, China. Dr Feng completed her doctorate at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Dr Feng has published a monograph with Springer and articles/book chapters with Discourse, Context & Media, Intercultural Communication Studies, Linguistic Research, Journal of Chinese Sociolinguistics, Springer and John Benjamin’s. Her research interest includes interpersonal pragmatics, intercultural communication and computer-mediated communication. Email: angelaweifeng@126.com.
Wei Ren is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University, Beijing, China. His research interests include Second Language Pragmatics, Pragmatics and Second Language Acquisition. His recent publications include articles in Applied Linguistics, Assessing Writing, Critical Discourse Studies, Discourse Context and Media, ELT Journal, Foreign Language Annals, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, Journal of Multicultural and Multilingual Development, Journal of Pragmatics, Language Teaching, Lingua, Pragmatics, and System. Email: weiren@buaa.edu.cn
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the editor and the reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions. The second author would like to thank the National Social Science Fund Key Project of China “Chinese English Learners’ Second Language Pragmatic Comptences Research” (17AYY023).
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