Appraisal in na"ive discourse: ethnolinguistic and gender aspects (on the material of TripAdvisor)

Purpose: The article deals with appraisal expression in naïve discourse presented in the reviews of hotels left by Russian and French people on the French and Russian versions of Tripadvisor.com. This web site contains feedback from ordinary customers about different places like restaurants, museums, shops etc. around the world. Tripadvisor.com enables to know some personal information about the authors of reviews. The material is analyzed from the points of view of ethno-linguistics and gender linguistics in order to see if there are any differences in types of appraisal and its means of expression based on the language and/or gender of reviewers. The classification by the reason of appraisal made by N.D. Arutyunova, supplemented with one more type named securitary appraisal, serves as the methodological basis of our research. Results: It is shown that qualitative appraisals are the most widely presented types in all four groups of reviews (written by Russian men, Russian women, French men, and French women); quantitative and complex appraisals are much less frequent. Among qualitative appraisals the most widely presented subcategory in the reviews written by both men and women, Russian and French people is general appraisal. The number of contexts with emotional appraisal and the means of its representation are similar in all four groups of texts. The reviews written by French women contain the smallest number of the contexts evaluating hotels from the point of view of complying with norms and meeting standards. As for the utilitarian appraisal, the minority of the examples can be seen in the reviews by Russian women. Aesthetic appraisal is most frequently presented in Russian men’s texts, while hedonistic appraisal is less typical for this group in comparison with three other groups. The most widely spread means of appraisal expression in all four groups are words with axiological meaning, especially adjectives, whereas metaphors are somewhat untypical for this kind of discourse. Syntactic, phraseologial, and morphological means are used less frequently. In some cases authors strengthen or weaken their appraisals. The French do it more often than the Russians and tend to have more various spectrum of appraisal strengthening and weakening. Conclusion: The vast majority of the types of appraisal differ in their quantity depending on both gender and language of the authors, yet practically each type of appraisal is presented most or least frequently in only one particular group. Thus, we see no direct correlation between either the language or the gender and the types of appraisal. However, there is correlation between the frequency of appraisal strengthening or weakening and authors’ languages. Linguistic means of appraisal expression are similar in naïve discourse texts written by people of both genders and in both languages. The results of the present research has not only theoretical, but also practical value because they can be used for better understanding of the demands of target groups and the peculiarities of reactions of the representatives of different cultures and both genders.