I’m having a Spring Clear Out: A Corpus-based Analysis of e-transactional Discourse

• Dawn Knight ^[1] ; Steve Walsh ^[2] ; Savvas Papagiannidis ^[2]
  1. [1] Cardiff University

     Cardiff University

     Castle, Reino Unido

     
  2. [2] Newcastle University

     Newcastle University

     Reino Unido

     
• Localización: Applied linguistics, ISSN 0142-6001, Vol. 38, Nº 2, 2017, págs. 234-257
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The focus of this paper is on characterizing patterns of language use in online auction sites (the ‘e-marketplace’), with a specific focus on the language used in product descriptions listed on eBay. Through a corpus-based based analysis of a sub-corpus of a 6.3-million-word corpus of eBay data, the authors aim to gain a better understanding of variance in descriptions, depending on two key factors: seller experience and item condition (a high number of ‘new’ listings for a particular seller is likely to be a sign of a more experienced seller). This paper describes the methods and approaches used to construct the eBay corpus and provides a detailed analysis of a sub-corpus of data as a means of identifying some of the key transactional and interactional features found in this genre of discourse.