| Complaining is very common in daily communication, and it occurs when a speaker reacts with displeasure or annoyance to an action that has offended the complainer. However, with the development of speech act theory, studies of speech acts have mainly focused on compliment, apology, greetings, disagreement, request, and invitation. The research of complaints has been put less light on. In recent years, the popularity of online shopping has made Internet an interactive medium which offers users an immediate and readily accessible way to publish his/her thoughts, feelings and viewpoints about products and services, not merely a shopping website. Hence this thesis focuses on the study of complaints online.This present thesis collects a purposeful sample of 150 negative reviews with a broad variety of types of services or goods from Taobao website. Combining the qualitative and quantitative research method, it first analyzes the realization patterns and characteristics of the data, and then investigates these characteristics based on Brown & Levinson’s Face Theory(1987) and Leech’ framework of politeness(1983; 2014). The results indicate that the strategies of complaint and complaint-responses are slightly different from traditional classifications because of the particular features of online context. Besides, suggestion as well as compliment is frequently used to occur as a “speech act set” together with complaint. What’s more, the ratio of direct complaint far outweigh that of the indirect complaint, which shows a healthy trend for online transaction. In addition, some effective strategies are proposed to manage consumer complaints, satisfy customer’s needs, and establish a long-term relationship. |
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