BELF and National Cultures on European Corporate Websites: A Cross-Cultural Investigation

The study explores website discourse in English in a corpus of national companies. The companies are located in four European countries, selected with reference to Hofstede’s cultural model (Hofstede et al., 2010). Following on a qualitative analysis, which confirmed that the English used in the website texts can be qualified as BELF (Business English as a Lingua Franca), a corpus-assisted approach was adopted for the study of the noun phrase ‘our + [members of the company]’. The findings revealed that some aspects of the field of discourse (Halliday & Hasan 1989) may be interpreted with reference to Hofstede’s framework, thus further illuminating the relationship between language and culture.