A Comparative Genre Analysis of Turkish Consumer Reviews in Digital Contexts

This study presents a genre-based comparative analysis of 100 Turkish product reviews collected from Trendyol and 100 book reviews from Kitapyurdu, aiming to uncover the structural, linguistic, and pragmatic features shaping user-generated digital discourse. Drawing on frameworks of move structure analysis and linguistic evaluation, the research investigates how differing communicative purposes, expectations, and platform affordances influence the way users articulate evaluations, express emotions, and offer recommendations. The findings demonstrate that product reviews generally adhere to a concise and function-oriented structure, often comprising an initial evaluation, followed by a reasoning phase that justifies the user’s stance based on personal experience, and concluding with explicit recommendations or appreciation directed toward sellers or future buyers. These reviews are typically characterized by informal and conversational language, spelling and punctuation irregularities, extensive use of intensifiers, as well as extralinguistic aspects such as emojis that visually reinforce affective meanings. Notably, product reviews frequently mention ideas about packaging quality, delivery speed, or the suitability of the product for a specific family member, enhancing their persuasive impact. In contrast, book reviews display an elaborate rhetorical organization. They often begin with detailed descriptions or definitions of the work, reference the author’s broader literary contributions, and provide interpretative evaluations enriched by thematic summaries or selective quotations. The syntactic complexity, careful punctuation, and lexically diverse style of these reviews signal a deeper cognitive and affective engagement with the content. By illustrating how genre conventions and platform contexts jointly shape linguistic and discursive choices, this study underscores the value of genre awareness in fostering critical digital literacy. It also points to pedagogical applications in language teaching and suggests avenues for future research on digital genres across diverse sociocultural settings, media platforms, and interactional modalities.