Intertextuality and Authorized Transgression in Parodies of Online Consumer Reviews
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Abstract
Parody is a visible contemporary phenomenon associated with many types of digital media. While several discourse analytic studies have discussed multimodal parodies of YouTube videos, this article shifts the focus of analysis to parodies of a primarily text-based genre of digital communication: user-generated consumer reviews on the e-commerce site, Amazon. Examining 100 texts written about five popularly parodied products, I show how online review parodies are embedded within complex and layered intertextual chains that include other parody reviews and bona fide reviews, as well as other related texts found on the same site. I also suggest that by engaging in parodic discourse practices – which include intertextuality, narrativity, and double-voicing – authors of parody reviews participate in authorized transgression and create a sense of ambient affiliation.
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