Abstract

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With the increasing popularity of online shopping among consumers and the continuous development of interactive digital communication, online reviews are prevalent in contemporary life. As a new genre, online reviews deserve more attention in language and discourse studies. Existing studies in this field predominantly investigate online reviews in English. More research on a greater variety of languages is needed to better understand the linguistic features of this genre and the localization of the social practice. Therefore, this study adds to the growing literature on online consumer reviews by analysing intensification in Chinese online consumer reviews from a dataset of 355 user-generated online comments on the Kindle Paperwhite E-reader on Amazon China. The study first analyzes the usage and frequency of different types of intensification in reviews. The distribution of intensification devices is then investigated according to review valence (negative vs. positive). Since Chinese writing is based on characters rather than alphabets, some particular uses of Chinese intensification are identified and discussed. The study demonstrates that the exploration of intensification in Chinese online consumer reviews can enrich and provide further insights for research on this genre.