This study examined the rhetorical moves of complaints and the complaint strategies used by Japanese and Malaysian hotel guests between two cultural groups. Swales's (1981) move analysis was applied to identify and analyse the moves, while Trosborg's (1995) taxonomy of strategies was employed to analyse the speech act of complaints. The study's objectives are to investigate the communicative moves used by Japanese and Malaysian when expressing their regret through TripAdvisor and to analyse the complaint strategies used by Japanese and Malaysians when performing complaints online. The descriptive qualitative research method was employed, and data comprised 40 negative reviews towards hotels in Langkawi. The study used online reviews from TripAdvisor's website, to examine the negative feedback from Japanese and Malaysian guests in the English language were posted. The findings showed that the complaints' communicative moves had six moves: Opening, Dissatisfaction, Explanation, Recommendation, Closing, and Compliment, which were adapted from Morrow and Yamanouchi (2020). Moreover, findings of the move frequencies revealed that both the Japanese and Malaysian hotel guests would elaborate their frustration in detail as the 'Explanation' move. However, Malaysian travellers indicated more reasons and sequences of frustration than Japanese travellers. Furthermore, the sequence of the moves is not in a proper structure of conveying a complaint on TripAdvisor, whereby the 'Compliment' move was found either in the beginning, in the middle or in the ending parts of the text. Taxonomy of the complaint strategies by Trosborg (1995) was verified as follows: 1) 27.5% of No Explicit Reproach, 2) 35% of Disapproval Expression, 3) 22.5% of Accusation, and 4) 15% of Blame. In summary, the findings revealed that the two groups have comparable approach selections but differ in terms of complaint moves, complaint strategies, and language phrases for expressing frustration. Thus, knowing cross-cultural similarities and differences in speech acts can help avoid possible intercultural miscommunication, and managing negative customer reviews is pertinent for the hotel industry to improve intercultural communication.

This paper discusses the use of rhetorical elements in a newspaper article published by Bloomberg, entitled Three Hours Longer, the Pandemic Workday Has Obliterated Work-Life Balance. Four keywords (‘rhetorical analysis’, ‘news article’, ‘work from home’, ‘COVID-19’) were used to identify the rhetorical elements in the news article. This is a mixed method analysis where the data is qualitative, but the analysis is done both quantitatively and qualitatively. The newspaper articles were analysed by using the Ethos, Logos and Pathos rhetorical structure. Firstly, Ethos, Logos and Pathos was clearly defined. Secondly, these elements were broken into subcategories of their own. What makes up Ethos is its credibility, expectations and reference. Logos has three sub categories which are clarity, conciseness, and arrangement. Lastly, Pathos is made up of tone, emphasis and engagement. Implications that were faced when analysing this document was that there were negative perceptions from employees in interviews conducted on the subject of working from home. Therefore, readers will interpret and view working from home gives more issues and challenges rather than benefits. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0788/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>