On the grammar of scam: transitivity, manipulation and deception in scam emails

Abstract

This study examines the language of scam, focusing on one key lexicogrammatical system for representing experience, the system of transitivity. The study is informed by systemic functional linguistics theory and is based on a clause-by-clause analysis of forty scam email messages, comprising 860 clauses. The frequency distribution of process types shows that scammers mimic the everyday taken-for-granted construction of experience in discourse in producing scam, thereby concealing the motive of the scammer. Second, scammers favor three sub-types of material processes, namely communication-oriented clauses, clauses of transfer of possession and use-oriented clauses. In addition, scam emails are shown to be interpersonally rich in the use of personal pronouns to index and position scammers relative to their target email recipients in manipulative ways. Also, the possessive determiners my, your and our are used in nominal groups functioning as participants to position the scammer and target recipients differently. Notably, the pronoun my (representing the scammer) normally collocates with social relationship/kinship terms or a noun denoting the condition of the scammer, your (representing the recipient) collocates with nouns denoting material possessions or semiotic activities, while our often collocates with nouns that evoke some institutional commitment, locating the scammer within a network of relations.

Keywords:

• online deception
• possessive pronouns
• scam email messages
• systemic functional linguistics
• transitivity

ORCID

Richmond S. Ngula http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3499-4480

Notes

1 By the term “subliminally” we mean that we are focusing on the lexicogrammatical patterning of the emails as an “implicit” (linguisitic) strategy for construing deception, i.e. this kind of strategy is not readily observable to the reader, as opposed to for instance lexical choices, but rather can only be revealed by a more systematic analysis.

2 While we acknowledge that the different categories of scam emails in our data set may show different linguistic configurations, they will also share general patterns since they have a common communicative purpose. Also, the uneven distribution of scam emails in the corpus is not suitable for a comparative study. This can be the focus of further research.

3 One reviewer rightly queries how the dominant use of personal pronouns in the scam emails compares with legitimate advertising emails. We note that we are not claiming that the richness in the use of pronouns in scam emails is unique to this type of email. Our focus here is to examine the tenor enacted in scam emails and identify the function of this tenor in this type of email. Emails with different communicative purposes will however tend to use personal pronouns for different functions and with a different distribution.