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- Title
(Im)personalization in German and English Negative Online Reviews: Contrasts, Comparisons, and Cognitive Implications.
- Authors
Fastrich, Bridgit
- Abstract
The current study contributes to the demand for more multilingual analyses of online reviews, comparing English and German-language hotel reviews on Booking.com. Specifically, it seeks to shed light on the linguapragmatic contrast of the German speaker showing a preference for more "content-orientation" and the English speaker more "person-orientation" by exploring the use of the first-person perspective (FPP) in online reviews. It further integrates cognitive linguistic theories of construal, considering whether the results implicate not only a difference in the assumedly intentional rhetorical preferences of speakers but also cognitive differences in ways of experiencing a hotel stay, which might also have important implications for how hotels tailor their language-specific responses and maybe even how hotels design their service and intended customer experience. The findings show that FPP did occur in more English reviews, indicating more personalization and thus a more personalized cognitive processing of the hotel stay. However, when FPP was identified in German reviews, it occurred at a similar frequency to English reviews, reflecting a similar degree of subjective involvement. The findings may thus indicate that while this contrast was robust on a whole, linguacultural differences may play an increasingly smaller role as online genres merge into more global styles, a trend that communications practitioners must increasingly consider.
- Subjects
ENGLISH language; CONSUMERS' reviews; HOTEL design &; construction; HOTEL ratings &; rankings; LANGUAGE services; RHETORICAL theory; CUSTOMER experience; GERMAN language
- Publication
International Journal of Business Communication, 2024, Vol 61, Issue 1, p39
- ISSN
2329-4884
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1177/23294884231200249