The level of context dependence of engagement markers in Peninsular Spanish and US business websites

Authors

  • Francisco Miguel Ivorra-Pérez Universidad de Valencia
  • Rosa Giménez-Moreno Universidad de Valencia

Keywords:

Intercultural communication, context, digital genre, engagement markers

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of Spaniards’ and North-Americans’ level of context dependence (Hall, 1976) on the engagement markers (Hyland & Tse, 2004) used on the presentation page of 100 business websites from the toy sector (50 from Spain and 50 from the US). Following an observational and a quantitative analysis, the findings reveal remarkable statistical differences in the interactional discourse of this digital genre, which may be a valuable source of information for export companies to introduce their products abroad by means of their business websites. In addition, we believe that the business website can be used in the teaching and learning of Spanish and English for professional purposes, with a special focus on the way interactional discourse is produced and interpreted in this digital genre cross-culturally.

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Author Biographies

Francisco Miguel Ivorra-Pérez, Universidad de Valencia

Dr Francisco Miguel Ivorra-Pérez is assistant lecturer in the Department of English and German Studies, member of the Interuniversity Institute of Applied Modern Languages (IULMA) and Head of the Group of Support for Investigation in Language Variation Analysis (SILVA), at the University of Valencia (Spain). Since 2006 he has carried out research and taught in English for Specific Purposes, Discourse Analysis and Cross-Cultural Pragmatics (English-Spanish). He is author of the book La Comunicación intercultural y el discurso de los negocios, edited by the University of Alicante and has published articles on cross-cultural pragmatics applied to profesional and academic genres in both national and international journals. He has also published book chapters on this line of research. He has participated in numerous national and international conferences.

Rosa Giménez-Moreno, Universidad de Valencia

Dra Rosa Giménez-Moreno is senior lecturer in the Department of English and German Studies and founding member of the Interuniversity Institute of Applied Moderna Languages (IULMA) and the Group of Support for Investigation in Language Variation Analysis (SILVA), both at the University of Valencia (Spain).  She has special research interest in English for specific purposes, rhetorical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics and language variation, especially register and genre variation. She has published her research in prestigious journals and participated in international conferences during the last 25 years.

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Published

2018-11-19

How to Cite

Ivorra-Pérez, F. M., & Giménez-Moreno, R. (2018). The level of context dependence of engagement markers in Peninsular Spanish and US business websites. Revista De Lenguas Para Fines Específicos, 24(2), 38–53. Retrieved from https://ojsspdc.ulpgc.es/ojs/index.php/LFE/article/view/1059

Issue

Vol. 24 No. 2 (2018): Revista de lenguas para fines específicos. Issue dedicated to Professor Françoise Salager-Meyer

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Artículos/Articles

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