I'm having a Spring Clear Out: A Corpus-based Analysis of e-transactional Discourse

摘要

The focus of this paper is on characterizing patterns of language use in online auction sites (the 'e-marketplace'), with a specific focus on the language used in product descriptions listed on eBay. Through a corpus-based based analysis of a sub-corpus of a 6.3-million-word corpus of eBay data, the authors aim to gain a better understanding of variance in descriptions, depending on two key factors: seller experience and item condition (a high number of 'new' listings for a particular seller is likely to be a sign of a more experienced seller). This paper describes the methods and approaches used to construct the eBay corpus and provides a detailed analysis of a sub-corpus of data as a means of identifying some of the key transactional and interactional features found in this genre of discourse.