| Online shopping is coming into fashion due to the rapid development of Internet technology.Meanwhile,Internet provides people with a platform to voice their shopping experience freely.The consumers’reviews,especially negative ones,on the websites,can not only offer references to other potential customers,but also give the sellers certain suggestions to improve the quality of their service and products.The textual features of negative reviews conform to the definition of complaint（Olshtain&Weinbach,1987;Trosborg,1995）.What’s more,the issue pertaining online complaints in this study concerns the tourism industry,where dissatisfaction occurs more frequently than that in other service industries.Therefore,in the current study,negative reviews on hospitality of Chinese and British on the biggest travel review site—Tripadvisor—are collected to explore the differences and similarities of speech act of complaint among Chinese and British reviews.The main research questions are as follows:1)based on Trosborg’s complaint model,what are the features of Chinese and British online complaints,in terms of complaint strategies,complaint perspective and internal modification 2)What are the differences and similarities on online complaints between the Chinese and British samples?3)What possible factors contribute to the observed patterns?In order to address the above questions,107 negative reviews from China site and 102 negative reviews from Britain site are collected.According to Trosborg（1995）’s complaint model and the characteristics of data collected,both quantitative and qualitative analysis are used in the content analysis of data.Besides,SPSS software is employed to test data.The results show that（1）in online commercial setting,totally seven strategies and eight sub-strategies were adopted by both Chinese and British tourists.They are:S1.negative reviews with positive statement,S2.expression of disapproval or annoyance,S3.explicit complaint,S3A.direct description of the service failure,S3B.reference to travelers’expectation,S3C.explicit reference to complaints,S4.potential threats,S4A.recommendation and advice for the readers,S4B.warnings for the readers,S4C.comparison with other hotels,S5.accusation and warning,S6.request,S6A.request for repair,S6B.giving the hotel advice or hoping for improvement,S7.complaint with explanation.There are some similarities between the two samples:S3.“explicit complaint”and S3A.“direct description of the service failure”account for100%in both Chinese and British samples.Meanwhile,there are some similarities between the two samples in using words in the process of complaining.Except that,significant differences are found between two samples in strategy two,sub-strategy three C,strategy four,sub-strategy four A,sub-strategy 4C,sub-strategy six A and sub-strategy six B.In addition,in terms of complaint perspective,Chinese tourists tended to view hotels as the addressees,while British tourists were more likely to communicate with fellow travelers.Lastly,British reviewers used more internal modification related to what Chinese tourists did,especially intensifiers.The Chinese were more willing to use upgraders like lexical intensification and aggressive interrogative to directly express their dissatisfaction.（2）The variances in Individualism vs.Collectivism,High context vs.Low context in Chinese and British cultures,together with the context of online commercial might contribute to the observed similarities and differences.In general,compared to traditional spoken or written complaints,people express tougher words or sentences to complainees online.Chinese samples still tend to complain in a more implicit manner relative to British’s;they try not to bring threats to complainees,i.e.the hotels.The current study would shed lights into the study on speech act of complaint,and increase people’s awareness of cross-cultural communication.The findings could offer some managerial suggestions for tourism industry. |
