Intertextuality and interdiscursivity in online consumer reviews

Abstract

This chapter discusses the traditionally associated with the analysis of literary texts; however, recent work on digital discourse and digital practices has shown that intertextuality can be found in virtually all types of online discourse. A focus on intertextuality and interdiscursivity in online discourse seems especially relevant because both phenomena highlight ‘notions of relationality, interconnectedness, and interdependence’ that are central not only to digital communication, but also to modern cultural life. The data discussed below come from a small, specialised corpus of 1,000 reviews, which were sampled from five websites associated with reviews of various types of products: Hotels, common consumer goods, restaurants, films, and recipes. The most common form of reference to other texts happens when authors of reviews refer to the texts written by other reviewers on that site. In the data set of 1,000 reviews, almost 15 per cent of reviews included reference to other reviews.