@ARTICLE{Łącka-Badura_Jolanta_Praising_2014,
 author={Łącka-Badura, Jolanta},
 volume={vol. 35},
 journal={LINGUISTICA SILESIANA},
 pages={225-241},
 howpublished={online},
 year={2014},
 publisher={Polska Akademia Nauk • Oddział w Katowicach},
 abstract={Grounded in the cognitive approach to speech act theory, whereby the boundaries between speech act categories are perceived as fuzzy, resulting in their directness/ indirectness being viewed as a matter of degree, the paper investigates the ambiguity of indirect speech acts found in the discourse of customer testimonials. The analysis is based on a corpus of 150 customer testimonials published on the home pages of 7 retailing companies offering their products online. The study reveals some interesting patterns in the persuasive/promotional use of (often ambiguous) micro speech acts contributing to the realisation of the macro-act of praising. It then attempts to rationalise customer testimonials as acts of boasting performed by organisations using customer quotes as word-of-mouth tools.},
 type={Article},
 title={Praising as boasting – on the ambiguity of speech acts in the discourse of online customer testimonials},
 URL={http://www.czasopisma.pan.pl/Content/118311/PDF-MASTER/12_Lacka.pdf},
}