Abstract
The chapter begins by documenting the history of eBay, showing how it started out as a platform for peer-to-peer interaction inspired by grassroots forms of buying and selling and ended up as a multibillion-dollar global empire which increasingly prioritized power sellers and businesses, and regulated what people can and cannot sell.
The chapter then uses genre analysis to compare traditional auctions with the way auctions are conducted on eBay, concluding that eBay auctions are a hybrid genre which combines elements from different modes of buying and selling and in which neither the seller nor the buyer has access to every detail of the transaction, while eBay controls the process as an omnipresent yet invisible puppeteer.
The chapter finally analyzes the language eBay uses to communicate with its users, showing it to be a hybrid of different styles in which the company’s unilateral control over the process is overlaid with a veneer of casual language and community rhetoric.
The chapter then uses genre analysis to compare traditional auctions with the way auctions are conducted on eBay, concluding that eBay auctions are a hybrid genre which combines elements from different modes of buying and selling and in which neither the seller nor the buyer has access to every detail of the transaction, while eBay controls the process as an omnipresent yet invisible puppeteer.
The chapter finally analyzes the language eBay uses to communicate with its users, showing it to be a hybrid of different styles in which the company’s unilateral control over the process is overlaid with a veneer of casual language and community rhetoric.
| Original language | English |
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| Title of host publication | Multimodality and Social Interaction in Online and Offline Shopping |
| Editors | Gitte Rasmussen, Theo Jacob van Leeuwen |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Publisher | Routledge |
| Publication date | 2024 |
| Chapter | 10 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978-1-032-25591-0, 978-1-032-25592-7 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 978-1-003-28412-3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2024 |
| Series | Routledge Studies in Multimodality |
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