| With the rapid development of web technology, internet is increasing widely used in people‘s life and work. Discourse occurring under the medium of internet has been gradually attracting scholars‘ attention. The current study collects negative reviews from the biggest shopping website in China-Taobao as research data. Complaint strategies in these negative reviews are analyzed.The research purpose of this thesis is to find out the complaint strategies employed in the negative reviews on Taobao. Through referring to the classification of complaint strategies proposed by Olshtain and Weinbach(1987), Trosborg(1995) and Laforest(2002), results are revealed based on the analysis of all the 1059 samples:Firstly, this thesis establishes a model of complaint strategies. This model includes seven strategies: Strategy one ―hints‖; strategy two ―expression of annoyance or disapproval‖; strategy three ―explicit complaint‖; strategy four ―requesting a change‖; strategy five ―potential threats‖; strategy six ―threats‖ and strategy seven ―curses and insults‖. Secondly, for the distributions of these strategies, strategy three ―explicit complaint‖, taking up 98.58%, is the most frequently used complaint strategy. Strategy two ―expression of annoyance or disapproval‖ is the second frequently used one with 35.03%. The thirdly frequently used complaint strategy in this thesis is ―potential threats‖(12.93%). Other four complaint strategies including strategy one ―hints‖, strategy four ―requesting a change‖, strategy six ―threats‖ and strategy seven ―curses and insults‖ are not frequently used ones and occupy 0.94%,8.78%, 5.95%, 3.87% respectively. Strategy one ―hints‖ is the least frequently used one. In general, results of the current study are mainly in line with previous studies. Similar to previous studies, ―explicit complaint‖ and ―expression of annoyance or disapproval‖ of the current study are also commonly used complaint strategies, but the ratios of specific strategy use are different. For the classification of strategies, this thesis proposes two new strategies: ―potential threats‖ and ―curses and insults‖. Furthermore, this thesis discusses specific realizing forms of ―requesting a change‖ and ―threats‖ and gives out detailed analysis on these forms, which are ignored by previous studies.Results of this thesis enrich previous studies on complaint strategies on the one hand and on the other hand present a better understanding of online complaint strategies. |
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