The use of persuasive language in fruit marketing: A contrastive study (English-Spanish)

The fresh fruit and vegetable trade has undergone a major transformation in recent years. Consumers' purchasing habits are highly conditioned by the online offer, as the Internet provides an efficient communication and transaction tool. In addition to including precise information on their nutritional characteristics, the online sales websites for these products place special emphasis on presenting them in an attractive way, based on the pleasant sensations they produce when ingested. This study analyzes persuasive language and the most frequent collocations in references used to describe the gustatory aspects in descriptive profiles of pears and apples found on websites of fruit companies. We conducted an English-Spanish contrastive analysis of a comparable bilingual ad hoc corpus. We observed that a varied terminology is used with a persuasive purpose, along with evaluative phraseology related to taste. These refer primarily to four aspects: (1) the pleasure experienced when consuming this fruit; (2) mentions of its unmistakable, characteristic and unique taste; (3) allusions to the enjoyable or festive nature of its flavor; and (4) comments regarding its level of taste, intensity or authenticity.