SOCIOPRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF TURKISH COMPLAINTS ON TRENDYOL: A CLOSER LOOK AT THE GENDER AND PRICE VARIABLES

Date

2024-8-01

Author

Tetik, Sena

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Complaints are an indispensable aspect of human interaction, which can manifest themselves in any conversation. However, the realisations and strategies of speech act of complaint are likely to change depending on each culture and context. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the complaint speech acts that Turkish people employ in a particular Computer-mediated Communication (CMC) context, Trendyol, an e-commerce platform, focusing on gender and price variables. Accordingly, within a sampling frame including nine criteria, a corpus containing 1648 reviews for gender and a corpus containing 2225 complaints (approximately 55.000 words) for the price was constructed and categorized. Following a mixed-method data analysis process, qualitative data analysis was carried out with a coding scheme containing 20 complaint strategies put together with a data-driven and theory-driven approach via MAXQDA 24. For the quantitative data analysis, the Mann-Whitney U test for gender variable, and the Kruskal Wallis-H test for price variable were conducted to discover statistical differences. The findings yielded similar distributions of complaint strategies for male and female complainers as well as for complainers who purchased cheap, moderately priced and expensive products, with nuanced differences. Females tend to justify their complaints whereas males are inclined to accuse the complainees, specifically naming them. Also, Turkish complainers who purchased expensive products are more prone to warn and give recommendations to the complainees while the ones who purchased cheap products are inclined to warn other customers. Hopefully, this study may throw light on the speech act of complaint preferences of Turkish people in a CMC context.

Subject Keywords

Speech act of complaint, gender, price, Trendyol, CMC

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/110835

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis