Online Reviews as Communal Formations. A Corpus Linguistic Approach

Within the framework of our research we intend to show how online reviews could be seen not only as texts, but as digital practices and as part of “communal formations”. In order to justify our claim, we have collected extensive data from different literary review resources as well as reviews of museums and exhibitions, and general discussions of cultural objects from different reviewing platforms. Implementing traditional methods of corpus linguistics, we analyzed the digital review processes by comparing average review and sentence length, normalized distribution of parts of speech and subordinate clauses, and the use of keywords and phrases. As a result, we established that online reviewing is based on platform specific patterns and can be described as a form of “communal formation” that consist of shared knowledge and shared practices.