Examines the discursive features of online consumer reviews, a form of web discourse growing hugely in importance.

The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews is the first book to provide an account of the discursive, pragmatic and rhetorical features of this rapidly growing form of technologically-mediated communication. Examining a corpus of over 1,000 consumer reviews, Camilla Vásquez explores many of the discourse features that are characteristic of this new, user-generated, computer-mediated and primarily text-based genre. She investigates the language used by reviewers as they forge connections with their audiences to draw them into their stories, as they construct their expertise and authority on various subjects and as they evaluate and assess their consumer experiences. She also demonstrates how reviewers display their awareness about emerging conventions of the very genre in which they are participating. This book adopts an eclectic approach to the analysis of discourse, and explores topics such as evaluation, identity and intertextuality as they occur in online reviews of hotels, restaurants, recipes, films and other consumer products.

"Vasquez analyzed 1,000 reviews of hotels, restaurants, movies, consumer products and recipes from five sites: Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon, Epicurious and Netflix. As she explains in the new scholarly book…the patterns in reviews reveal insights about the state of the English language and the mind of the modern consumer." - The New York Times

"This book has several strengths. First, it provides a congregational site for linguistics, media/digital studies and business communication studies with a series of exemplary analyses of online review texts ... Vásquez effectively explores the wide range of possibilities of approaching the online discourses of customer reviews, demonstrating the feasibility of working with data from a multi-dimensional perspective ... Thus, this work is a worthwhile addition as it is a valuable resource both for discourse scholars and or other scholars with an interdisciplinary background." - Discourse Studies

"[This] comprehensive analysis of online consumer reviews offers an exceptionally detailed overview of how exactly language is used in these interactive, consumer generated digital texts ... [U]sing a range of analytical methods, Vásquez zooms in to the texts and closely examines linguistic and discursive practices, thus enabling practitioners to translate her findings into practical applications and tasks in language, and communication training classes. ... The detailed analyses, case studies and examples enable future business and corporate communicators as well as their instructors to equip themselves with linguistic and discursive strategies that will help not only to survive but also to succeed in new business communication contexts." - English for Specific Purposes

"[A] timely and original perspective on the discursive practices of online consumer reviews. ... One of the most impressive features of this book is its clarity and careful attention to its own narrative structure as a methodological tool for data presentation. ... Through a rich triangulation of discourse analysis approaches, and data organized coherently into relevant themed chapters, readers are skillfully guided through the key discursive strategies and practices of a complex dataset ... I found this study both insightful and accessible. The work will undoubtedly feature as a resource for my own and my students’ future work on discourse in online narrative communities." - Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies