Abstract
Globalization in trade and industry has led to the need for writing specialized texts in English as a lingua franca in all domains. Non-native speakers often find difficulties in the production of specialized texts, including online promotional discourse. In the food industry, the description of manufactured products is often followed by serving suggestions written in an attempt to appeal to the consumer/buyer and make them visualize different ways in which they can present the product. Because of the importance of this key section for marketing purposes, we have analyzed the language employed in serving suggestions. The main pragmatic functions found are instruction and persuasion, and this paper explores the expression of these functions cross-linguistically in English and Spanish texts promoting the consumption of cheese. The empirical data have been extracted from a comparable corpus of cheese descriptions in the two languages, which has been rhetorically tagged to isolate the move of serving suggestions. The main findings have revealed that, in both languages, the instructive function tends to be conveyed through syntactic structures, whereas the persuasive function is mainly expressed through phraseological patterns and specific lexical units with positive connotations. This paper contributes to the international expansion of local companies providing an inventory of linguistic resources for the successful writing of promotional texts in a foreign language. The results are also useful in translation and foreign language writing, both for professionals and students, especially in the field of marketing.
References
Austin, J.L. (1989). How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press.
Author. (2014).
Author. (2020).
Banerjee, J. and Carrell, P.L. (1988). Tuck in your shirt, you squid: suggestions in ESL. Language Learning, 38, 313-347. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1988.tb00416.x
Bhatia, V. (2004). Worlds of written discourse. Continuum.
Biber, D., Connor, U., and Upton, T.A. (2007). Discourse on the Move. John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.28
Biber, D. and Zhang, M. (2018). Expressing evaluation without grammatical stance: informational persuasion on the web. Corpora, 13(1), 97–123. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3366/cor.2018.0137
Chiavetta, E. 2006. A genre analysis of ‘how to’ feature articles in British gardening magazines. In: V.K. Bhatia & M. Gotti (Eds.), Explorations in Specialized Genres (pp. 155-176). Peter Lang.
Colina, S. (1997). Contrastive rhetoric and text-typological conventions in translation teaching. Target 9(2), 335-353. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/target.9.2.07col
Dayter, D. (2014). Self-praise in microblogging. Journal of Pragmatics, 61, 91-102. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2013.11.021
Dayter, D. (2018). Self-praise online and offline. Internet Pragmatics, 1(1), 184-203. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00009.day
Díaz Rodríguez, L. and Enríquez, N. (2020). Textos Instructivos en Español Nativo, No Nativo y de Herencia 1. In: J. de Santiago-Guervós and L. Díaz Rodriguez (Eds.), Lingüística textual y enseñanza del español LE/L2 (pp. 71-92). Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315101828-6
Díez Prados, M. (2019). Verbal and nonverbal engagement devices in business persuasive discourse. The elevator pitch. In: C. Sancho Guinda (Ed.), Engagement in Professional Genres: Deference and Disclosure (pp. 217-242). John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.301.12die
Háhn, J. (2010). Promotional Genres in Virtual Space. The Text-only Sponsored Advertisement, the Banner and the Business Homepage from a Linguistic Point of View. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Pécs, Pécs, Hungary.
Holmes, J. (1983). The structure of teachers’ directives. In: J.C. Richards & R. W. Schmidt (Eds.), Language and Communication (pp. 89-115). Longman.
Hyland, K. (2005). Metadiscourse. Exploring Interaction in Writing. Continuum.
Janoschka, A. (2004). Web Advertising. John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.131
Kádár, D.Z. & House, J. (2020). Ritual frames. A contrastive pragmatic approach. Pragmatics, 30(1), 142-168. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.19018.kad
Li, E.S. (2010). Making suggestions: A contrastive study of young Hong Kong and Australian students. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 598-616. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2009.07.014
Maíz Arévalo, C. (2021). “Blowing our own trumpet”: Self-praise in Peninsular Spanish face-to-face communication. Journal of Pragmatics, 183, 107-120. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.07.001
Manca, E. (2010). From phraseology to culture: Qualifying adjectives in the language of tourism. In U. Römer & R. Schulze (Eds.), Patterns, meaningful units and specialized discourses (pp. 105-122). John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.13.3.07man
Marmaridou, S. (1990). Contrastive analysis at discourse level and the communicative teaching of languages. In J. Fisiak (Ed.), Further Insights into Contrastive Analysis (pp. 561-571). John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/llsee.30.34mar
Martin, J.R., & White, P.R.R. (2005). The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511910
Matley, D. (2018). “This is NOT a# humblebrag, this is just a# brag”: the pragmatics of self-praise, hashtags and politeness in Instagram posts. Discourse Context Media, 22, 30-38. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2017.07.007
Pérez Blanco, M. & Izquierdo, M. 2022. Engaging with customer’s emotions. A case study in English-Spanish online food advertising. Languages in Contrast, 22(1), 43-76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.19016.per
Rebollar, R., Lidón, I., Gil, I., Martín, J., Fernández, M.J. & Riveres, C.E. (2016). The influence the serving suggestion displayed on soft cheese packaging has on consumer expectations and willingness to buy. Food Quality and Preference, 52, 188-194. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2016.04.015
Ren, W. & Guo, Y. (2020). Self-praise on Chinese social networking sites. Journal of Pragmatics, 169, 179-189. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2020.09.009
Richards, J.C. (1985). The Context of Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, R.W. & Richards, J.C. (1980). Speech acts and second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 129-157. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/I.2.129
Searle, J.R. (1979). Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511609213
Suau-Jiménez, F. (2019). Engagement of readers/customers in the discourse of e-tourism promotional genres. In C. Sancho Guinda (Ed.), Engagement in Professional Genres (pp. 341-358). John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.301.18sua
Swales, J.M. (1990). Genre Analysis: English in Academic and Research Settings. Cambridge University Press.
Swales, J.M. (2004). Research Genres. Explorations and Applications. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524827
Tobback, E. (2019). Telling the world how skilful you are: self-praise strategies on LinkedIn. Discourse & Communication, 13(6), 647-668. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481319868854
Vanderveken, D. & S. Kubo (Eds.). (2002). Essays in Speech Act Theory. John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.77
Van Dijck, J. (2013). ‘You have one identity’: performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn. Media, Culture & Society, 35(2), 199-215. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443712468605
Weisser, M. (2018). How to Do Corpus Pragmatics on Pragmatically Annotated Data. John Benjamins. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.84
Copyright (c) 2025 Noelia Ramón, Belén Labrador
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.