| With the rapid development of Internet,online shopping is becoming more and more convenient.For consumers,although online shopping is very convenient,it also has some disadvantages.When consumers are dissatisfied with their online shopping experience,they are likely to become angry and leave negative reviews on the feedback board of shopping websites with complaints.Such negative reviews have a great impact on the brand image of online stores and the purchase intention of potential consumers.Although many scholars have studied complaints from the perspective of pragmatics,sociolinguistics and cross-cultural communication,few have studied complaints on online shopping platforms from the perspective of rapport management theory.Considering this,the research selects 300 negative reviews from Amazon as the corpus,using qualitative and quantitative research method,based on Hellen Spenser-Oatey’s rapport management theory and the complaint model of Olshtain &Weinbach and Laforest,to make a detailed analysis of the complaints in these negative reviews.This research mainly explores the following three questions:(1)What types of complaint strategies are used in online consumer negative reviews?(2)How do complaints used in online consumer negative reviews violate the rapport management theory?(3)What are the pragmatic motivations of these online complaints from the perspective of rapport management theory?The results show that based on the complaint model by Olshtain&Weinbach and Laforest,consumers mainly use five types of complaints in online consumer negative reviews,namely “expression of annoyance or disapproval”,“request for complainee’s justification”,“explicit complaint”,“requesting a change in behavior” and “accusation and warning”.At the same time,it is found that the complaints in online consumer negative reviews are realized through violating rapport management in four ways:violating quality face,violating identity face,violating equity rights,and violating association rights.In addition,based on the rapport management theory,the pragmatic motivations of the complaints in online consumers’ negative reviews are to threaten or destroy the harmonious relationship so as to achieve specific communicative goals,such as satisfying self-face,venting negative emotions,and maintaining social rights and obligations.This research has important theoretical and practical significance.In theory,this research uses the Spencer’ s rapport management theory and Olshtain&Weinbach and Laforest’s complaint model to make a detailed analysis of complaints in negative reviews of consumers on Amazon,and provides a new research perspective for complaints.In practice,this research has important practical guiding significance for shop owners to manage their online stores and improve their quality of products and services.Meanwhile,it has certain reference value to maintain and enhance interpersonal harmony. |
