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

| Beihang University, Beijing, China
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: Chinese, computer-mediated communication (CMC), intensification, online consumer review (OCR), review valence
Published online: 10 January 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.300.08ren
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