Chapter published in:
Technology Mediated Service Encounters
Edited by Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Lucía Fernández-Amaya and María de la O Hernández-López
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 300] 2019
► pp. 199–222

Chapter 8
Intensification in online consumer reviews

Insights from Chinese

This study adds to the growing literature on online consumer reviews by analyzing intensification in Chinese online consumer reviews from a dataset of 355 user-generated online comments on the Kindle Paperwhite E-reader on Amazon China. The study first analyzes the usage and frequency of different types of intensification in reviews. The distribution of intensification devices is then investigated according to review valence (negative vs. positive). Since Chinese writing is based on characters rather than alphabets, some particular uses of Chinese intensification are identified and discussed. The study demonstrates that the exploration of intensification in Chinese online consumer reviews can enrich and provide further insights for research on this genre.
Keywords: online consumer review (OCR), intensification, Chinese, review valence, computer-mediated communication (CMC)
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Online consumer reviews
  • 3.Intensification
  • 4.Data sample and data analysis
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Intensification strategies
    • 5.2Intensification across rating valence
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 10 January 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.300.08ren
References
Athanasiadou, Angeliki
2007 “On the Subjectivity of Intensifiers.” Language Sciences 29: 554–565.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Barron, Anne
2007 “Ah No Honestly We’re Okay: Learning to Upgrade in A Study Abroad Context.” Intercultural Pragmatics 4 (2): 129–166.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan
1999 Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Birks, Melanie, and Jane Mills
2015 Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide. 2nd ed. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Cao, Xiuling
2008 ““相当”的虚化及相关问题 [The Grammaticalization of Xiangdang and Its Relevant Issues].”《中国语文》[Chinese Language] 4:317–321.Google Scholar
Chen, Sherry Yong
2014 “From OMG to TMD – Internet and Pinyin acronyms in Mandarin Chinese.” Language@Internet 11 (article 3).Google Scholar
Chevalier, Judith A., Mayzlin, Dina
2006 The effect of word of mouth on sales: Online book reviews. Journal of Marketing Research 43, 345–354.Google Scholar
Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Cristian, Gueorgi Kossinets, Jon Kleinberg, and Lilian Lee
2009 “How Opinions Are Received by Online Communities: A Case Study on Amazon.Com Helpfulness Votes.” Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on World Wide Web.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Department of Language Information Management, Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China
2016 Language Situation in China: 2012. Beijing: The Commerical Press.Google Scholar
Diani, Giuliana
2008 “Emphasizers in Spoken and Written Academic Discourse: The Case of Really .” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 2: 273–290.Google Scholar
Dresner, Eli, and Susan C. Herring
2010 “Functions of the Nonverbal in CMC: Emoticons and Illocutionary Force.” Communication Theory 20: 249–268.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Elm, Malin Sveningsson
2009 “How Do Various Notions of Privacy Influence Decisions in Qualitative Internet Research?” In Internet Inquiry: Conversations about method, ed. by Annette N. Markham and Nancy K. Baym, 69–87. Los Angeles: SAGE.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar
2015 “Setting the Linguistics Research Agenda for the E-Service Encounters Genre: Natively Digital Versus Digitized Perspectives.” In A Multidisciplinary Approach to Service Encounters, ed. by María De La O. Hernández-López and Lucía Fernández-Amaya, 15–36. Leiden: Brill.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Gray, Bethany, and Douglas Biber
2015 “Stance Markers.” In Corpus Pragmatics: A handbook, ed. by Karin Aijmer and Chirstopher Rühlemann, 219–246. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael, and Wei-lin Melody Chang
2015 “Troubles Talk, (Dis)Affiliation and the Participation Order in Taiwanese-Chinese Online Discussion Boards.” In Participation in Public and Social Media Interactions, ed. by Marta Dynel and Jan Chovanec, 99–133. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
He, Ziran, and Wei Ren
2016 “Current Address Behaviour in China.” East Asian Pragmatics 1 (2).CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, Kevin P. Gwinner, Gianfranco Walsh, and Dwayne D. Gremler
2004 “Electronic Word-of-Mouth Via Consumer-Opinion Platforms: What Motivates Consumers to Articulate Themselves on The Internet?” Journal of Interactive Marketing 18 (1): 38–52.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Herring, Susan C.
2001 “Computer-mediated Discourse.” In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen and Heidi E. Hamilton, 612–634. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ho, Victor
2017 “Achieving Service Recovery Through Responding to Negative Online Reviews.” Discourse and Communication 11 (1): 31–50.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Holmes, Janet
1984 “Modifying Illocutionary Force.” Journal of Pragmatics 8 (3): 345–365.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1990 “Hedges and Boosters in Women’s and Men’s Speech.” Language and Communication 10 (3): 185–205.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ito, Rika, and Sali A. Tagliamonte
2003 “ Well Weird, Right Dodgy, Very Strange, Really Cool: Layering and Recycling in English Intensifiers.” Language in Society 32: 257–279.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, Alexandra
2009 Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kamoen, Naomi, Maria B. J. Mos, and Willem F. S. Dekker
2015 “A Hotel That Is Not Bad Isn’t Good. The Effects of Valence Framing and Expectation in Online Reviews on Text, Reviewer and Product Appreciation.” Journal of Pragmatics 75: 28–43.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Lisa R.
1998 “Evaluating the Potential of Interactive Media Through A New Lens: Search Versus Experience Goods.” Journal of Business Research 41 (3): 195–203.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Labov, William
1984 “Intensity.” In Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, ed. by Deborah Schiffrin, 43–70. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin
1975 Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Levin, Irwin P., Sandra L. Schneider, and Gary J. Gaeth
1998 “All Frames Are Not Created Equal: A Typology and Critical Analysis of Framing Effects.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 76 (2): 148–188.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levin, Irwin P., Sara K. Schnittjer, and Shannon L. Thee
1988 “Information Framing Effects in Social and Personal Decisions.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 24: 520–529.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Li, Charles N., and Sandra A. Thompson
1981 Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lim, Ni-Eng, and Huaqing Hong
2012 “Intensifiers as Stance Markers: A Corpus Study on Genre Analysis.” Chinese Language and Discourse 3 (2): 129–166.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ma, Zhen
2016 现代汉语虚词研究方法论 [Methodology on Modern Chinese Function Words]. Revised ed. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Martin, James R., and Peter R. R. White
2005 The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Phillip
1970 “Information and Consumer Behavior.” Journal of Political Economy 78: 311–329.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Palacios Martínez, Ignacio M., and Paloma Núñez Pertejo
2012 “ He’s Absolutely Massive. It’s A Super Day. Madonna, She Is A Wicked Singer. Youth Language and Intensification: A Corpus-Based Study.” Text and Talk 32 (6): 773–796.Google Scholar
2014 “Strategies used by English And Spanish Teenagers to Intensify Language: A Contrastive Corpus-Based Study.” Spanish in Context 11 (2): 175–201.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Park, Do-Hyung, and Sara Kim
2008 “The Effects of Consumer Knowledge on Message Processing of Electronic Word-Of-Mouth Via Online Consumer Reviews.” Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7: 399–410.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Quelch, John A., and Lisa R. Klein
1996 “The Internet and International Marketing.” Sloan Management Review 37 (3): 60–75.Google Scholar
Ren, Wei
2013 “The Effect of Study Abroad on The Pragmatic Development of The Internal Modification of Refusals.” Pragmatics 23 (4): 715–741.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2016 “Strategies Used in Chinese University Students’ ELF Emails to Remedy or Prevent Problems in Understanding.” In Email Discourse among Chinese Using English as a Lingua Franca, ed. by Yuan-Shan Chen, Der-Hwa Victoria Rau and Gerald Rau, 163–181. Berlin: Springer.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “Mitigation in Chinese Online Consumer Reviews.” Discourse, Context and Media: 1–8.Google Scholar
Ross, Glaudia, and Jing-heng Sheng Ma
2006 Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar: A Practical Guide. London/New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Shan, Yunming
2004 “副词“真”和“很”的用法比较 [A Comparison of Usage Between Adverb Zhen and Hen ].” 《汉语学习》 [Chinese Language Learning] 6: 68–70.Google Scholar
Sifianou, Maria
2013 “The Impact of Globalisation on Politeness and Impoliteness.” Journal of Pragmatics 55: 86–102.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stapleton, Karyn
2010 “Swearing.” In Interpersonal Pragmatics, ed. by Miriam A. Locher and Sage L. Graham, 289–305. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin
1998 Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. 2nd ed. Newbury Park: SAGE.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A.
2016 “So Sick or So Cool? The Language of Youth on The Internet.” Language in Society 45: 1–32.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tian, Youfei
2013 “Engagement in Online Hotel Reviews: A Comparative Study.” Discourse, Context and Media 2: 184–191.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vandergriff, Ilona
2013 “Emotive Communication Online: A Contextual Analysis of Computer- Mediated Communication (CMC) Cues.” Journal of Pragmatics 51: 1–12.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vásquez, Camilla
2011 “Complaints Online: The Case of TripAdvisor .” Journal of Pragmatics 43: 1707–1717.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2012 “Narrativity and involvement in online consumer reviews: The case of TripAdvisor .” Narrative Inquiry 22 (1):105–121.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
2015 “ Right Now Versus Back Then: Recency and Remoteness as Discursive Resources in Online Reviews.” Discourse, Context and Media 9: 5–13.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Virtanen, Tuija
2017 “Adaptability in Online Consumer Reviews: Exploring Genre Dynamics and Interactional Choices.” Journal of Pragmatics 116: 77–90.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Li
[1985] 2011.《中国现代语法》[Modern Chinese Grammar]. Beijing: Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Willemsen, Lotte M., Peter C. Neijens, Fred Bronner, and Jan A. de Ridder
2011 ““Highly recommended!” The Content Characteristics and Perceived Usefulness of Online Consumer Reviews.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 17: 19–38.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Chunsheng
2007 “Chinese Internet Language: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Adaptations of the Chinese Writing System.” Language@Internet 4.Google Scholar
Zhang, Bin
ed. 2001 现代汉语虚词词典 [A Modern Chinese Function Words Dictionary]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Wei
2012 “Chinese-English Code-Mixing among China’s Netizens.” English Today 28 (3): 40–52.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, Yi, and Camilla Vásquez
2014 “Hotels’ Responses to Online Reviews: Managing Consumer Dissatisfaction.” Discourse, Context and Media 6: 54–64.CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Feng, Wei & Wei Ren
2019. “This is the destiny, darling”: Relational acts in Chinese management responses to online consumer reviews. Discourse, Context & Media 28 ► pp. 52 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.