A Comparative Genre Analysis of Hotels’ Responses to Negative Reviews

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Abstract

This study compares responses to negative reviews (RNRs) of local Thai hotels and top UK hotels to address similarities and differences in (i) communicative purposes perceived by writers, (ii) move and step applications, and (iii) linguistic features. Interview data reveals two major communicative purposes: image protection and service recovery. A move structure comprising six moves and twenty steps was proposed. A “genuine apology” and direct contact information were offered much more frequently by top UK hotels, leading to the conclusion that such hotels are strong-willed toward recovering clients. An examination of first-person subjective pronouns (we and I) suggests that top UK hotels are more lenient to conventional style, as they tend to be selective in their use of we and I.