Pragma-linguistic and stylistic features of the English online movie review

Abstract

The paper deals with linguo-pragmatic and semantic-stylistic characteristics of the English-online movie review. Internet communication provides a fertile ground for the development of the modern genre studies due to the emergence and development of digital genres, or Internet genres. The amateur online movie review is one of the most widespread Internet genres due to its high degree of the audience-oriented intention, focus on the wide range of readers, as well as the dialogical nature of communication. The aim of this paper is to reveal and systematize pragmatic and stylistic parameters of the English amateur online movie review. The empirical study is based upon the movie reviews taken from the IMDb website. The analysis of online movie reviews has revealed that their pragmatic function is determined by the use of the wide range of linguistic and stylistic evaluative means. In most cases the ascription of explicit evaluative characteristics to the film and its components in the text of the amateur online movie review is done with the help of the evaluative language. The important finding is that the creation of perlocutionary effect and the attribution of dialogization and intimization to the speech act are created by the use of personal pronouns of the first and second person singular, imperatives, appeals, question-and-answer structure. We have come to the conclusion that various lexical and syntactic means of expressiveness belong to stylistic markers of online movie review carrying evaluative, emotional and emphatic connotations. All the analysis conducted allows us to conclude that online movie review beside the initial function of informing also performs perlocutionary force.