Cultural Values and their correlation with interactional metadiscourse strategies in Spanish and US business websites

The present paper explores the way in which the cultural dimension of individualism is reflected in the interactional discourse of Spanish and US business websites. This cultural dimension is concerned with the way individuals from a particular culture define their own identity and their relationship with other people. Considering the scores of Spain and the US on the individualism index, the objective of this study is twofold: (a) to analyse the type of interactional metadiscourse strategies used on the presentation pages of Spanish and US toy company websites, and (b) to determine whether the individualism index scores of Spaniards and North Americans are reflected in different interactional metadiscourse strategies when companies establish a social relationship and persuade a potential customer to purchase their products. The results obtained confi rm that there are important differences in the interactional discourse of this digital genre, which may be a valuable source of information for export companies that wish to introduce their products abroad by means of their business websites.