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.
Highlights
On the website of the leading German ticket agency Eventim, concert reviews written by customers can be found under the heading “Fan-Reports: Bewertungen und Rezensionen”
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 forpositioning
I have analysed fan reports, that is online concert reviews written by customers of the ticket agency Eventim
Summary
On the website of the leading German ticket agency Eventim, concert reviews written by customers can be found under the heading “Fan-Reports: Bewertungen und Rezensionen” (fan reports: ratings and reviews). Looking back on the concert, she is overtly expressing her enthusiasm, albeit in a rather clichéd way by phrases like would give anything to repeat this day, and through repeated use of the intensity marker so (so great, so unreal, so awesome).[2] She positions herself within the group of fans who share the same experience of – as she puts it – ‘having set the mood’ and who have played their part in the constitution of this emotionally thrilling event.[3]. The special case of fan reports may reveal how the fans’ evaluation practices are entangled with economic aspects and processes of commodification This will shed light on how fans make “their culture out of the commercial commodities [...] of the cultural industries”[12] and how they use the commercial platforms as resources for building up communities of shared feelings.[13]. I will discuss some implications for the constitution of fandom and fan cultures at the interface of subcultural practice and commodification (sec. 7)
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