| With the rapid development of science and technology, Internet is more and morewidely used in people’s life and work, and also offers a good platform for people tovoice their opinions freely. Rapid advancement of web technology enables customers toincreasingly use the Internet as a channel to describe their experiences. Therefore,consumer-generated content (CGC) is growing in importance as it can not only offeradvice and references for other customers, but also give the sellers some suggestions toimprove qualities of service and products. The negative hospitality reviews used in thecurrent study are collected from the most prominent travel review site---TripAdvisor. Asnegative hospitality reviews on TripAdvisor have some specific features that are inaccordance with definitions of complaints given by some scholars (Olshtain andWeinbach,1987, Edwards,2005, Sacks,1992), they can be regarded as complaints.Thus, the complaint strategies adopted in them can be studied.The purpose of the thesis is as follows: by establishing a new model of complaintstrategy for current study, the thesis makes comparative study of Chinese and Americancomplaint strategies so as to find out the similarities and differences between them andfinally uses Hall’s (1976) theory of high-context/low-context and Hofstede’s (1983)cultural dimension of individualism/collectivism to explain the differences. Accordingto the above purpose, three research questions are proposed:1) What are the complaintstrategies of Chinese and American negative hospitality reviews on TripAdvisor?2)What are the similarities and differences of the complaint strategies between Chineseand American samples?3) How do the underlying intercultural theories give influenceon the choice of different strategies by Chinese and Americans in performing the speechact of complaining? Based on the above research questions, the current study collects48Chinese samples and90American samples. The SPSS18.0software is used to doindependent sample T-test between the two samples and explore whether the differenceof every strategy is significant.After analyzing the samples and making comparative analysis, the thesis gets thefollowing results. Firstly, on the basis of the two models of complaint strategiesproposed by Olshtain&Weinbach (1987) and Trosborg (1995), the thesis makesempirical studies on the samples collected and finally establishes a new model ofcomplaint strategy for current study, including six strategies and seven sub-strategies as followings: strategy one of “complaints with positive remarks”, strategy two of“expression of disapproval or annoyance”, strategy three of “explicit complaint” withsub-str. three A of “referring to complainers’ expectations”, sub-str. three B of “makingexplicit reference to a complaint” and sub-str. three C of “directly describing theunacceptable act”, strategy four of “potential threats” with sub-str. four A of“recommendations and advice for the reader” and sub-str. four B of “warnings for thereader”, strategy five of “accusation and warning”, strategy six of “request for repair”with sub-str. six A of “asking staffs of the hotel for repair” and sub-str. six B of “givingthe hotel advice”. Secondly, as for the similarities, the first one is that strategy three,strategy one and strategy six are respectively the top three complaint strategies that arefavored in both Chinese and American samples. Another similarity is that strategy threeof “explicit complaint” and sub-str. three C of “directly describing the unacceptable act”account for100%in both Chinese and American samples. Meanwhile, there are somesimilarities between the two samples in using words in the process of complaining.Thirdly, as for the differences, the proportions of three strategies and threesub-strategies are significantly different between Chinese and American samples.Among them, only strategy one has a higher proportion in Chinese samples than inAmerican samples but sub-str. three B, strategy four, sub-str. four A, strategy five andsub-str. six B have higher proportions in American samples than in Chinese samples.In general, Chinese samples try to avoid the threat to the hotel and seek for aharmonious coexistence. In comparison with American samples, they tend to complainin a more implicit manner. However, American samples may not consider too muchabout bringing threats to the hotel. The overt message may be adopted to directlyexpress the complaints or negative feelings about the hotels without considering toomuch about the benefits of them. Thus, we should understand the speech act ofcomplaining from the intercultural perspective so as to study and utilize it effectively. |
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