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

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.

Keywords

• Intercultural communication
• context
• digital genre
• engagement markers