In computer-mediated communication (CMC) or, better said, technology-mediated communication or TMC (Gianmateo, Gubitosi & Parini, 2017)2, adaptability is translated into a set of affordances, such as locus (context), dynamism (processes) or audiences. Regarding the former, consumer reviews have a clear communicative purpose, which is to evaluate a consumer product and therefore are directed towards the topic or towards the author; that is, they are built around the subject of the opinion (topic-opinion) or around the perception of the author (self-opinion).

Topic-focussed

(1) El libro perfecto para enseñar sintaxis, salvo por un detalle. No incluye las soluciones a los ejercicios, lo que habría sido muy útil.

(The perfect book to teach syntax, save for one detail. It does not include solutions to the exercises, which would have been very useful).

Author-focussed

(2) En mi opinión, el libro XX es una introducción excelente al estudio de la pragmática. Una lástima que el curso que estoy enseñando termine en enero.

(In my opinion, the book entitled XX is an excellent introduction to the study of pragmatics. Too bad the course I’m teaching ends in January).

(Adapted from Virtanen, 2017: 82).

The study analysed a corpus of reviews on linguistics manuals, so these characteristics (focus on the topic / focus on the author) are particularly marked, and adaptability is shown here as a nexus between academic genres (the target audience) and promotional ones, since the reviews are written by experts in the field, demonstrating their knowledge, but also intend to make a persuasive argument. In other types of reviews, such as those of hotels that this study focuses on, reviewers are evaluating an experience, not a product, which therefore has to be lived before it can be reviewed (Vasquez, 2011, Mariottini and Hernández Toribio, 2017) and can be written in different ways, as a short opinion, a narration or arguing a certain point. Studying responses, which is not done in the work of Virtanen or Vasquez, allows further research into the possibilities of the ‘locus’; the reactions to the opinions of prosumers by businesses add their point of view. Their communicative purposes and specific target audience are projected both towards the internal (on-line) and external (offline) community. In this corpus, therefore, the main objective is precisely to study the reviews and their responses together, to be able to describe the processes and representations that take place in these interactions.

3. The notion of style in computer-mediated communication

As the sociolinguistic and sociopragmatic research of the last decades has shown, the choice of style in a communicative activity depends on the socially established relationship between the formal linguistic characteristics of the statement and the properties of the communicative situation. Therefore, it has consequences for the representation that speakers and recipients make of the experience in which such use is appropriate. Social practice, be it public or private; the conditions