“As soft as water, as hot as fire!”: Intensification strategies in online comments of a Chinese fan community

Abstract

Comments generated by users of online music streaming platforms have become an under-researched digital genre. We explore this field by analyzing the intensification devices of comments generated by the Spanish new generation singer Álvaro Soler’s Chinese fans. Based on a corpus composed of 1,646 comments collected from Netease Cloud Music and following a “coding and counting” approach, this article examines the usage of intensification strategies in these reviews and the most emphasized topics. Results from this study will reveal how Chinese fans use this pragmatic strategy to express emotions. In addition, their enthusiasm and interest are not limited to the star, but also extend to some linguistic and sociocultural aspects. This work provides an interesting contribution to the study of intensification, and shows Chinese teenagers’ perception of Spanish popular culture from a particular and innovative perspective.