362 | nº 31, pp. 361-380 | doxa.comunicación
July-December of 2020
Style variation in digital interactions: guests and hotels in Tripadvisor reviews
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
1. Introduction1
Interest in the field of computer-mediated communication has increased in recent years in studying the interactions that take place in different fields, such as consumption, tourism and travel, thanks to the so-called ‘electronic word of mouth’. New 2.0 platforms feature a huge variety of users’ opinions, either in the form of opinions or comments after reading a news item, a column in the press, an editorial or following the purchase of consumer products (Chen & Xie, 2008). This context of open and horizontal interaction has given rise to the figure of the “prosumer”, a consumer who is also a producer of Internet content (Vasquez, 2011, 2014; Virtannen, 2017).
This paper focuses on this phenomenon, specifically on the reviews posted by guests commenting on their stay at hotels through the Tripadvisor platform, created precisely to host the opinions of users. The platform allows guests’ experiences to be shared with other travellers, while at the same time reaching and being read by hotel managers (Law 2006). These two types of recipient mean Tripadvisor opinions become a form of free advertising for hotels and businesses, with their services promoted on users’ personal initiative (Miguéns, Baggio & Costa, 2008).
The study of user opinions has aroused a growing interest in pragmatics and discourse studies. In particular, types of complaint that are posted on Tripadvisor (Vasquez, 2011, 2014) and customer satisfaction on Airbnb (Hernández López, 2019) have been described, although always in English. In Spanish, interest has arisen in studying the mechanisms that mitigate speech acts appearing in hotel and restaurant reviews (Mancera Rueda, 2018, Hernández Toribio & Mariottini, 2015), as well as the processes of narration of experiences by travellers (Mariottini and Hernández Toribio, 2017).
However, responses to user opinions have received little attention, when these constitute reactive forms to the review that allow us to see the discursive practice entirety. Furthermore, while most studies have focused on speech acts and in particular on complaints, or on specific aspects such as mitigation, the way in which interactions between guests and hotels take place has not been analysed, nor has its features of styles and registers. Another interesting question that arises in the collection of reviews, as in all internet data collection, is to what extent discursive practice has to be delimited in
1 This study is part of the research carried out within the framework of the research project entitled ‘Variación pragmática en la expresión de la cortesía en español’ (Pragmatic variation in the expression of politeness in Spanish) funded by UCM-Grupo Santander, REF PR87 / 19-2254, grant date 12/4/2019, as well as the R&D project entitled ‘Los procesos de la gestión de la imagen y la (des)cortesía: perspectivas históricas, lingüísticas y discursivas’ (The processes of face and rapport management and (im)politeness: historical, linguistic and discursive perspectives), PID2019-107668GB-I00, grant date 06/20/2020.
ultimately projecting different perceptions of linguistic standards, while expanding the possibilities of linguistic innovation and expression.
Keywords:
Style variation; consumer reviews; digital communication; internet pragmatics; linguistic norm
cativas, pero muestran estilos comunicativos diferentes y divergen-tes, por no decir encontrados y opuestos, reflejo de las realidades e imágenes sociales de los usuarios y de las audiencias potenciales que posee cada uno, enfrentando percepciones polivalentes de la norma lingüística al tiempo que ampliando las posibilidades de innovación y expresión lingüística.
Palabras clave:
Variación de estilo; reseñas de consumo; comunicación digital; pragmática en internet; norma lingüística.
