The Discursive Construction of Identity Through Metapragmatic Comments in BlaBlaCar Online Reviews

The digitisation of modern societies has brought about an increasing interest in communication among Internet users. In this sense, talking about, as well as assessing communication, has become a common trend in, among others, experience-based online consumer reviews. When it comes to platforms such as BlaBlaCar, the importance given to conversations is expressed even in its name. Against this backdrop, this study examines the metapragmatic comments and labels found in 1000 Spanish online reviews with a positive bias, extracted from www.BlaBlaCar.es . The aim is twofold: firstly, to examine the ways in which users describe their past communicative or relational carpooling experiences; and secondly, to explore the extent to which metapragmatic comments can inform about the users’ identity (Bucholtz & Hall, Discourse Studies 7:585–614, 2005), and the discursive processes that enact those identities. The findings reveal that the metapragmatic comments found in BlaBlaCar reviews are highly informative of users’ identities. Users construct and verify the drivers’ and their own identities by means of, mainly, processes of adequation and authentication (Bucholtz & Hall, Discourse Studies 7:585–614, 2005), but also by shifting language style and interactional footing, adopting epistemic orientations and positioning themselves as part of specific gender groups.