370 | 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
with guests (addressing them by name) and use a formal and distant style that highlights the professional nature of the response and the projection of a corporate image that can be seen by the chosen guest and also by all platform users.
The second parameter analysed is the use of forms of address and T-V distinctions, such as pronominal and personal forms of the verb, both in reviews and hotels’ responses, the results of which appear in Table 2. Both full personal pronouns (I, you, etc.) and verb agreement marking have been computed.
Table 2. Forms of address and T-V distinctions in hotel reviews and responses. Number of appearances and [ratio of appearances per review] hotel responses
Forms
Reviews
Hotel responses
No.
[ ]
No.
[ ]
First person singular (yo, ‘I’ in Spanish)
340
[2.83]
21
[0.21]
Second person singular (tú, informal ‘I’ in Spanish)
70
[0.68]
-
-
First person plural (nosotros, ‘us/we’ in Spanish)
449
[3.74]
589
[5.77]
Second person plural (vosotros informal plural ‘you’ in Spanish)
36
[0.30]
-
-
Usted/le (formal singular ‘you’ in Spanish)
4
[0.03]
375
[3.68]
Ustedes/les (formal plural ‘you’ in Spanish)
2
[0.02]
15
[0.15]
Sr./Sra./Sres. (Sir, Madam, Sirs)
5
[0.05]
8
[0.08]
Source: Prepared by the author
As can be seen, since reviewers construct their opinion around experience or personal assessment, a frequent formula starts with ‘yo’ followed by the opinion. This explains the frequency of appearance of the first person pronoun in the corpus (340 cases of ‘yo’ and 440 of ‘nosotros’). This formula of ‘yo’ followed by an opinion (8) varies to the first person plural, ‘nosotros’, when the reviewer wishes to reflect that the stay was shared with family or friends (9):
(8) Yo la verdad tuve una mala experiencia porque me dieron una habitación alejada y al entrar olía terrible a humedad, (Opinion 14 Hotel C)
(The truth is I had a bad experience because they gave me a room that was fvery far away and when I entered it smelled terrible musty)
(9) Estamos hospedados en el hotel, vinimos a pasar nuestra luna de miel, desde que llegamos tuvimos problemas. (Opinion 2 Hotel B, travelling as a couple) We’re staying at the hotel, we came on our honeymoon, and since we arrived we had problems.
This formula also alternates with the presentation focussed on the topic, in line with the topic + opinion scheme, which does not use the first person but rather centres the text on evaluating the experience, without individualising or appellative marks, as can be seen in (10).
