From “My Manly Husband…” to “… Sitting Down to Take a Pee”: The Construction and Deconstruction of Gender in "Amazon Reviews"

• Autores: Camilla Vásquez, Addie Sayers China
• Localización: Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions / coord. por Patricia Bou Franch, Pilar Garcés Conejos, 2019, ISBN 978-3-319-92662-9, págs. 193-218
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Through a discourse analytic case study of Amazon reviews, this chapter examines how online reviewers use language to orient to gendered identities and to invoke gender in product descriptions. Comparing legitimate product reviews with parody reviews, Vásquez and Sayers illustrate how legitimate product reviewers reify essentialist gender binaries and gender stereotypes, whereas parody reviewers contest hegemonic gender discourses in three ways: by satirizing product-related sexist discourses, by challenging the corporate gendering of products, and by interjecting off-site external political discourses of gender into reviews. Ultimately, the authors assert that Amazon review space accommodates the simultaneous presence of both modernist and postmodernist conceptualizations of gender identities, while functioning as a virtual agora where commercial activities and political discourses coexist.