I’ve noticed that over the last few months, right after I’ve given a presentation about online reviews, or when the topic of my research comes up in conversation, people have started sharing their favorite reviews with me. Now wait a minute, you might be thinking, there are people out there who actually have favorite reviews? Trust me, no one was more surprised (or excited!) to discover this than I was.

What this means, I believe, is that while some reviews are informative, others can be downright entertaining. And the REALLY talented review writers manage to both inform and entertain at the same time.

Here are just a few “personal faves” of Amazon reviews that people I know have shared with me in the last few months.

Roach Gel

Pam forwarded me this Roach Gel review, explaining that she loves the review because of the passion that this author put into writing it. She also finds the tone of this review to be totally hilarious. Apparently, lots of other people do too, according to the comments that appear below it. The slang expressions, the vernacular language used, and the pop culture references all work together to make it a pretty entertaining paragraph. (And, living in Florida, I know that insect issues can be very disturbing, so I, too, appreciate how this reviewer managed to turn an icky topic into a humorous text!)

Stone Coasters

Amanda, who shared the stone coasters review, loves it precisely because it’s the opposite of the previous review. The tone of this one is super formal, the main points of the author’s argument are clearly enumerated, and apparently, the author is someone who takes the quality of coaster surfaces very, very seriously. As she explained to me, she is amused by the paradox of this review: it offers such a careful description of what is quite possibly one of the most trivial products imaginable = coasters.

English Grammar for Dummies

Now this last one is obviously a parody. Not only is the content itself totally “over the top,” but if you look at the top of the page, you’ll see that the review has received nearly 6,000 helpfulness votes. 5,944 to be exact. (And let’s face it, while this book *might* have a wide reach, the other 5-star reviews have only received between 3-105 helpfulness votes. Hmmm, that’s a huge difference.)

In fact, the friend that forwarded this review to me via email (thanks Maria!) received it from another person who said that she had seen it on Facebook. This means that people are sharing their favorite reviews not only with me, but with other people, via social networking sites!

Btw, beyond what I’ve already mentioned about this review, it’s also worth pointing out that “Nikolai,” the author, has posted only this one review on Amazon, and has included no other identifying information in his profile. (These 2 characteristics are often given as indicators to look out for in potentially fake reviews.)

I have been fascinated by parody reviews for quite a while now, but that’s a topic for a-whole-nother post! Stay tuned…

In the meantime, if you happen to have a favorite review, please post it as a reply, or email it my way!

about online reviews that you have learned through your research?”

I was asked this question by a woman I met at a yoga retreat a week ago, as we were exchanging our professional life stories during lunch one day. It’s one of those questions that’s like “So what do you plan to do after graduating with a degree in Art History?” You know, the type of question that you probably should have an answer to…and that fact that you don’t have one, and are suddenly on the spot, launches you into a state of momentary panic.

In my defense, I have to say that it’s not easy to boil down 6+ years of academic research into a pithy 30-second sound-bite to be shared with someone you’ve known for barely 10 minutes, as you’re chatting over platefuls of quinoa salad. In fact, I don’t even remember what I said in response to her question. But actually it IS a really good question. So I’ve been thinking about it some more over the last few days. And I believe I’ve come up with a decent-ish answer. Here it is:

Something totally unexpected that I learned as I wrote my book is the strong role that the future plays in our evaluation of past experiences. Even more than explaining how much you’ve loved, enjoyed or appreciated something – and even more than using superlatives like the best, the nicest, or the most delicious – the biggest test of how much you really liked something is this: Would you want to repeat the experience in the future? Ok, so the hotel was “nice and clean”…would you stay there again? Would you go back to that restaurant that you gave 4 stars to? Would you use that recipe to make those same brownies again? In my research, I’ve found that LOTS of reviewers use  references to the future to indicate their ultimate satisfaction with their consumer experiences. So when you see something like the following in the opening lines of a recipe review

We loved this dish. My husband and me and the cat. I’ll definitely make it again.

…you can be certain that the reviewer REALLY liked the recipe! Not only does she include the future reference “will make… again” but along with that, she adds the stance adverb, definitely, which underscores her commitment to that statement. And, come on, even her cat loved the recipe! (And if you know any cats, you know that her cat certainly didn’t fake liking the dish, just to please her.)

I’ve been invited to participate in a panel called “Language and Mobility: Space, time & social media – Communicating (the) here & now” in June 2014  at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 20  in Jyväskylä, Finland. The title of the talk I’ll be giving is “Right now versus back then: Recency and remoteness as discursive resources in online reviews.”  The basic idea is that many discourse scholars have noticed that a dominant characteristic of social media is its focus on recency, or “now-ness.” In other words, on what we are doing at-this-very-same-moment-when we are posting our status update on Facebook, or as we are tweeting. However, in my ongoing analysis of 1,000 online reviews, I am noticing that review writers are actually even more likely to mention something that took place several years ago than they are to describe what’s happening “right now.” I am still working through my analysis of temporal references, but in a few weeks, I hope to have some ideas about what functions these remote past references serve, and why review writers use them as much as they do.

My book, The Discourse of Online Consumer Reviews (Bloomsbury Press), will be published in just a few weeks! It’s been a 2.5 year long process from proposal acceptance to publication.

This is my very first book project, and I have to say that I have been super happy working with Bloomsbury. They have been responsive, helpful, and it seems like they try to make things as easy as possible for their authors.

I am also happy that my book will be part of an awesome series. The other titles in this series – especially those that deal with various types of digital discourse – have been inspiring to me: The Discourse of Blogs and Wikis (Greg Myers), Discourse of Text Messaging (Caroline Tagg) and Discourse of Twitter and Social Media (Michelle Zappavigna).