التداولية للابتزاز الالكتروني في البريد الالكتروني

The Pragmatics of Cyber Blackmail in Emails

“This study is concerned with analysing cyber blackmail’s emails using pragma-dialectical strategies. It is not specified, to the best of the researcher knowledge, what strategies are used in constructing cyber blackmail as a linguistic crime conducted through the cyber space. Thus, the present study attempts to fill in this gap as it aims at identifying blackmailers’ dialectical strategies, finding out how these strategies are realized pragmatically, and determining whether blackmailers tend to be polite or impolite in addressing their victims.
In compatible with the aims, it is hypothesized that cyber blackmailers employ some persuasive strategies, and these strategies are realized pragmatically in speech acts classification, politeness and impoliteness strategies, where blackmailers rely on politeness strategies in addressing their victims.
To achieve the aims of the study and examine the validity of the hypotheses, the researcher reviewed the literature on cyber blackmail, collected the emails, and used an eclectic model which consists of Sancho’s classification of blackmails (2017), the speech act theory including Searle’s (1979), Wunderlich’s (1979), and Yule’s (1996) classifications. The eclectic model also includes Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, Culpeper’s (1996) impoliteness theory, and some persuasive strategies including Manson’s (2011) authority, scarcity, personalizing, Cukier et al.’s (2007) appeal to guilt, Jason’s (1987) appeal to force, and Ross’s (2009) politeness. Additionally, the researcher added a new persuasive strategy to the model, i.e., appeal to promise. A qualitative and quantitative method has been used to conduct the study.
The study concluded that blackmailers utilize persuasive strategies to convince and gain victims’ compliance. These strategies are realized using various forms of speech acts with mainly two functions; threatening and requesting speech acts and employing (im)politeness strategies. Some persuasive strategies are realized by more than one utterance, in which the request for payment occurs in combination with other strategies. This point additionally has led to the conclusion that blackmailing is a conditional demand rather than a conditional threat. Additionally, blackmailers employ politeness strategies more than impoliteness ones in introducing face-threatening acts.
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