Genre of Online Restaurant Reviews

Contemporary genre studies need more research into the specifics of online communication. This paper describes the online genre of restaurant reviews. In this study, 200 restaurant reviews were subjected to T. V. Shmeleva’s conventional genre analysis while the methods of content and discourse analysis revealed the online specifics. Online restaurant review proved to be a hybrid genre with a reliable structure. It provides information about restaurants, evaluates them, and encourages or discourages a visit. The main genre-forming component is the perceptual experience of the critic, who abandons anonymity to gain greater trust from the recipients, i.e., impersonalized users with a consumer interest vs. identified restaurateurs looking for feedback. Online restaurant reviews are rich in words of perception, emotional and evaluative vocabulary, professional terms, and stylistic devices. In addition, they are oriented toward colloquial communication. The assessment of dictum content and polycode character are the specific features of the internet genre that complement the conventional model. All aspects of the dictum are subjected to assessment; expressive means are implemented by direct, indirect, implicit, and polycode methods. The polycode character of the review creates a multifaceted idea of the object of description while engaging the recipient in the selection process via a synergy of verbal, visual, and interactive elements.