Between consumers and fans: Writing fan reports as a multifunctional evaluation practice

Abstract

Based on a corpus of approx. 360,000 "fan reports", that is online concert reviews written by customers of a ticket agency, this paper analyses lexical and stylistic features of evaluative language and their social functions as means for (self-)positioning. The analysis shows that the reviews are oriented towards different and competing orders of value and their writers take different roles. While some writers act as enthusiastic fans that use the platform for building communities of shared feelings, other writers appear as consumers who judge primarily according to economic criteria. On the basis of concrete patterns of language use it is shown how the heterarchic plurality of evaluative standards is used as a resource for social demarcations. Der Hammer !!!Köln, LANXESS arena, 18.09.2016 ***** Das Konzert war einfach so toll! Ich war schon am 17.9 morgens da um auch wirklich sicher zu stellen das ich in die erste Reihe komme und es hat geklappt! Die Atmosphäre war einfach so krass und ich würde alles dafür geben diesen Tag nochmal zu wiederholen! Justin war so Hammer und die fans haben auch richtig Stimmung gemacht.Alles in allem : Perfekt ! Awesome !!!The concert was just so great! I was already there on 17.9. in the morning to make sure that I got into the first row and it worked! The atmosphere was just so unreal and I would give anything to repeat this day! Justin was so awesome and the fans really set the mood, all in all: Perfect! 1