| Online product review is a kind of new genre and is given by customers after consuming products on website.Due to the increasing importance of the purchasing process nowadays,online product review has attracted wide attention of researchers.Amazon is one of the most influential website both in China and abroad,so the online product reviews from Amazon have received widespread concern.Therefore,this thesis aims to investigate the moves and features of Chinese and English online product reviews by using the online product review of Amazon as research samples through genre analysis.This thesis discusses moves and language features of online product reviews from macro and micro perspectives.From a macro perspective,this thesis uses a new move model to see the similarities and differences between Chinese and English online product reviews.This new move model combines Skalicky(2013)’s move model and the move categories proposed by Bhatia(1993).From a micro perspective,language is the main focus and comparisons are made to see the similarities and differences in language expression.After the comparison,Hall(1976)’s high/low-context theory is introduced to explain the differences.In addition,the preferred review type of Amazon community is given on the basis of macro and micro findings.The main findings are showed as below:1.In all,there are 9 move types in online product reviews of Amazon.Moves are divided into Obligatory Move and Optional Move,according to their move frequency.Move frequencies which are higher than 50 percent are name as Obligatory Move,such as Title Move,Product Move,Experience Move and Evaluation Move.The rest moves belong to Optional Move.2.From a macro perspective,moves of English online product reviews have greater variety than Chinese online product reviews.A total of 9 moves can be found in English online product reviews while Chinese reviews only have 7 move types.From a micro perspective,English online product reviews also convey additional information,expressed by the use of capitalization,italic type etc.These findings show that English the community tends to express themselves with greater variance than Chinese.According to the high/low-context theory proposed by Hall(1976),people from low context culture communicates in a more direct way,with as much information aspossible.Situated in a low-context culture,American customers would more likely to communicate with more information.Therefore,the online product reviews are more diverse and informative.That is the reason why English online product reviews contain more information.3.Based on macro and micro analysis,most reviews on Amazon are related with product information,customer experience and evaluation,and the like.Comparison is more preferred in 5 star reviews.However,soliciting response is preferred in 1 star review in Amazon community.This thesis may help readers understand online product reviews more thoroughly.What’s more,it is hoped that this thesis offers some practical advice to webmasters and sellers,because good acceptance can help promote products. |
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