A Study on the Persuasive Function of Metadiscourse in Hotel Responses to Negative Reviews on TripAdvisor

With the flourishing of tourism, more and more travelers tend to look at reviews on travel websites before booking accommodations. To minimize the possible unfavorable influence generated by negative reviews on websites, hotels tend to provide persuasive responses to negative reviews. Metadiscourse resource, as a linguistic resource, can be possibly used for such persuasive purpose in hotel responses to negative reviews. Taking TripAdvisor, one popular global travel website based in America, as an example, the present study explores the types of metadiscourse used in hotel responses to negative reviews and their role in achieving specific persuasive goals. 200 English responses to negative reviews from 50 hotels at the top five destinations were collected and analyzed. Metadiscourse markers were identified and located with the help of AntConc 3.5.9 (Windows) 2020 and Microsoft Word. The results show that nine types of metadiscourse resources are used in hotel responses to negative reviews on TripAdvisor, and interactional metadiscourse markers are more frequently adopted than interactive ones. Furthermore, it is found that metadiscourse markers can help achieve persuasive goals such as restoring the damaged reputation, winning trust, and enhancing rapport. This research complements the study on metadiscourse by looking at it in the genre of review response and explores the practicality of Aristotle’s three rhetorical means of persuasion in explaining the persuasive functions in business discourse. Hopefully, this study will spire hotels to take advantage of different types of metadiscourse resources in their attempt to achieve persuasive goals in their responses to negative reviews.