A Cross-Cultural Pragmatic Study of Online Complaints by Japanese and Malaysian Hotel Guests in English

Abstract

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.

A Study on Consumers’ Negative Online Reviews and Merchants’ Responses Discourse Strategies Based on Rapport Management Theory

“…Marpurdianto (2022) draws that both Indonesian and American netizens employ abbreviations, uppercase and informal language to complain, while Indonesian adopt code-switching more frequently. Madon and Singh (2023) point out that Japanese on Tripadvisor tend to give simple messages of irritation without further details, while Malaysian disclose reasons in detail.…”

Communicative Barriers and Stereotypical Representations in the Interactions of Intracultural Groups within the Same Ethnicity with Different Dominant Languages of Communication: A Case Study of Kazakhstan

“…Isolated groups, which can be any social groups of the same ethnic culture based on territorial or other socio-distinguishing features, form stereotypes about each other. Ethnic stereotypes are biased beliefs or generalizations about the characteristics, behaviour, or attributes of people belonging to specific ethnic or cultural groups (Madon & Sekhon, 2023). They may cover various aspects such as appearance, language, cultural traditions, and perceived traits.…”

The Triangle of Language Use: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Hotel Responses to Reviews

“…The domain of computer-mediated business discourse has garnered substantial interest in move analysis, particularly in relation to responses to reviews, focusing primarily on RNRs of hotels (Ho, 2017;Madon & Singh, 2023;Panseeta & Watson Todd, 2014;Thumvichit & Gampper, 2018, 2019Zhang & Vásquez, 2014), followed by RPRs (Cenni & Goelthals, 2021;Thumvichit, 2016). To ensure a comprehensive analysis of the various attitudes expressed towards hotel services in reviews, this study conducts a move analysis encompassing NRs, PRs, MRs, RNRs, RPRs, and RMRs.…”

“…These responses significantly impact guest satisfaction, extending beyond casual interactions. RNRs have predominantly been researched (Ho, 2017;Madon & Singh, 2023;Panseeta & Watson Todd, 2014;Thumvichit & Gampper, 2018;Zhang & Vásquez, 2014), with limited attention to RPRs (Cenni & Goelthals, 2021;Thumvichit, 2016). Moreover, no research on RMRs is evident.…”

“…Additionally, mixed attitudes should be analysed in conjunction with positive and negative categories for effective online response to review management in the hotel industry. Additionally, based on the literature review, it was found that previous research on the use of language in responding to hotel service reviews has mainly focused on conducting move analysis (Cenni & Goelthals, 2021;Ho, 2017;Madon & Singh, 2023;Panseeta & Watson Todd, 2014;Thumvichit, 2016;Thumvichit & Gampper, 2018;Zhang & Vásquez, 2014), and some have analysed aspects of speech acts (Madon & Singh, 2023;Nasser, 2022). However, research to find answers regarding responding to hotel service reviews still has many unexplored issues, such as the level of language formality or the politeness strategies that should be used in responses.…”