Abstract
In this study, we focus on a specific form of metacommunication found in an emerging digital genre: Hotel reviews posted on TripAdvisor. In particular, we investigate how tourists represent their service encounter interactions. The main goal of the present study is to identify what these digital metacommunicative practices reveal about communicative norms and expectations among groups of reviewers writing in three different languages. We analyzed a multilingual dataset of 1800 reviews written in English, Dutch, and Italian. The results reveal that reviewers commented upon a broad range of aspects when evaluating service encounters interactions, for instance, describing the quality of the interaction (e.g. polite, correct), or a lack of communication when a specific type of communication is expected (e.g. absence of greetings, or apologies after a service failure). Further, we found similar cross-linguistic patterns, such as appreciation for being able to communicate in one’s mother tongue during the hotel-guest encounter. At the same time, a few differences across languages emerged, such as the preference for precise and correct information within British reviews. Since service interactions are of fundamental importance for customer satisfaction, our findings contribute not only to the current research on metacommunication in digital contexts, but may also be significant for service providers in the hospitality industry.
About the authors
Irene Cenni is a PhD Candidate in Applied Linguistics at Ghent University (Belgium). Her research interests include discourse analysis, pragmatics, intercultural communication, CMC and language of tourism. She is currently working on a dissertation about digital tourism discourse in Italian, English and Dutch.Her research has appeared in international peer-reviewed journals such as Discourse Context and Media. She also teaches courses for the department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication of Ghent University, both at the Bachelor and Master level.
Patrick Goethals is an Associate Professor in Spanish linguistics and multilingual communication at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University. His research interests include translation theory, discourse analysis, intercultural and multilingual communication, and tourism communication. He has published widely in peer-reviewed international journals.
Camilla Vásquez is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of South Florida. She is the author of The Discourse of Online Reviews (Bloomsbury, 2014) and Language, Creativity and Humor (Routledge, 2019). Her research on online reviews has appeared in journals such as Current Issues in Tourism, Discourse Context & Media, Food & Foodways, Journal of Pragmatics, Language@Internet, Narrative Inquiry and Visual Communication.
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