374 | 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
indicate emphasis, but also emotion, mainly negative, such as anger or indignation; emoticons or emojis, and oralisations, that is, written forms that imitate or evoke elements of orality, such as onomatopoeia or interjections.
Table 5. Typographical symbols, spelling and punctuation marks in hotel reviews and responses. Number of appearances and [ratio of appearances per review] hotel responses
Forms
Reviews
Hotel responses
No.
[ ]
No.
[ ]
Abbreviations
95
[0.79]
-
-
Spelling mistakes
749
[6.24]
24
[0.23]
Typographical errors
105
[0.88]
20
[0.19]
Expressive punctuation
92
[0.77]
-
-
Capital letters
242
[2.02]
-
-
Emoticons/emojis
7
[0.06]
-
-
Oralisations
6
[0.05]
-
-
1296
[10.80]
44
[0.42]
Source: Prepared by the author
Table 5 shows the results of the automatic counting and supports the general hypothesis, according to which reviews and responses show radically different styles. In this case, reviewers use numerous resources that have been identified by previous studies as characteristic of CMC, such as abbreviations, expressive punctuation, capitalisation, and make numerous spelling and typographical errors. The frequency of these suggests that reviewers do not pay particular attention to the writing and final editing of the review, which they publish immediately and send from their mobile devices (as shown in the review heading, which specifies ‘opinion uploaded from mobile device’). In particular, spelling and typographical mistakes appear most frequently, something that can be considered a feature of adaptability to the mode/channel; actually the use of mobile devices has given rise to this style feature. Another important factor of the writing through mobile devices is the lack of planning. These traits show how digital writing of reviews is immediate, spontaneous and unplanned. Other interesting features are the use of emoticons and/or emojis and oralisations, which also appear but much less frequently. This result is worth highlighting since it shows that these consumer reviews are very different to other internet interactions, such as social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) or WhatsApp, where emoticons and emojis are abundant and increasingly common. Undoubtedly, this characteristic is due to the non-interactive nature of the review. The emoticons and emojis and oralisations used in our corpus serve as intensifiers of positive reviews, do not play and interactive role like in social media. Another important factor is social distance, since Tripadvisor platform users do not know each other, and therefore do not show the affective interactivity of social media.
Table 5 shows that hotels’ responses show different stylistic choices.
Hotel responses feature few cases of spelling and typographical errors, which can be explained in terms of the level of communication skills and literacy exhibited by the staff in charge of the hotel digital communication. The absence of