Linguistic strategies of oleotourism on the Web

Activities related to olive oil tourism, also known as “oleotourism” (Millán Vázquez de la Torre et al. 2014) are continuously growing in Europe especially in the Mediterranean area. These activities enhance the knowledge of the olive oil production, its tasting, and its links with culture and local traditions and territories, such as the landscapes of the olive groves, gastronomic markets, historical events, or educational initiatives (cf. Ravetto 2018). This study aims to highlight syntactic and semantic strategies used in oleotourism on the Web to introduce and promote the olive and the olive oil, in particular the renowned “green gold” of Puglia, the first Italian region for quantity and quality of olive oil production per year. The data are collected to compile a specialized corpus of texts, such as reviews (published in newspapers, magazines, blogs) and specialized sites selected from the Web (cf. Granieri and Perri 2010). The attention is focused on lexicon and syntactic constructions, especially the event designed by combinations of verbs and argument structure constructions (Caruso and Riccio 2014), that not only describe and inform, but establish a direct connection with the readers by capturing and maintaining their attention, and persuading them (Calvi 2011; Lestari 2019). The data are analyzed by using the English FrameNet annotation procedure (Ruppenhofer et al. 2010), which applies the principles of Frame Semantics (Fillmore 1985). The FrameNet database is a useful linguistic ontology for cross-linguistic comparisons, and provides interesting data for lexicographical projects (cf. Atkins 1994; Burchardt et al. 2009; Schmidt 2009; Subirats 2009, Venturi et al. 2009; among others).