چکیده:
The term ‘spam’ addresses unsolicited emails sent in bulk; therefore, the term ‘financial fraud spam’ refers to unwanted bulk emails in which different tricks and techniques are employed to swindle money from the recipients. Estimates show that more than 80% of worldwide email traffic in 2011 was spam. It should be noted that while the number of daily spam emails in 2002 was 2.4 billion, this number rose to 200 billion spam emails in 2011. Considering the incurred cost of spam emails, finding effective ways for identifying spam emails may help decrease the cost to a great extent. It must be borne in mind that the generators of the financial fraud spam emails employ intricate persuasive strategies that make their stories believable to the readers. In an attempt to unravel some of these persuasive strategies, the present paper focuses on the use of presupposition, personalization, and lexical choice that are frequently used by the generators of the financial fraud spam emails. The results of the analysis showed that the above mentioned persuasive strategies were widely used in the text of financial fraud spam emails. Furthermore, the study demonstrated that persuasive lexical devices were used throughout the spam emails, including the email addresses. In terms of personalization and presupposition, the study showed that all parts of the spam emails, except the address section, were subjected to the use of these persuasive strategies.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"ACritical Analysis of Financial Fraud Spam in English in Terms of Persuasive Strategies: Personalization, Presupposition, and Lexical Choices Biook Behnam* Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch, Tabriz, Iran Behrooz Azabdaftari Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch, Tabriz, Iran Ali Hosseini Islamic Azad University, Tabriz Branch, Tabriz, Iran Received: December 19, 2012 Accepted: February 13, 2013 The term ‘spam’ addresses unsolicited emails sent in bulk; therefore, the term ‘financial fraud spam’ refers to unwanted bulk emails in which different tricks and techniques are employed to swindle money from the recipients.
In an attempt to unravel some of these persuasive strategies, the present paper focuses on the use of presupposition, personalization, and lexical choice that are frequently used by the generators of the financial fraud spam emails.
ABSTRACT: Keywords: financial spam, lexical choices, personalization, persuasive strategies, presupposition 1 The term discourse addresses the whole process of social interaction (Fairclough, 1989); therefore, discourse analysis is concerned with the analysis of language in its social context (Matthiessen, McCarthy & Slade, 2002).
In line with these purposes, the present study is designed to answer the following research question: What is the occurrence rate of presupposition, personalization, and lexical choices in financial fraud spam emails and how are these persuasive strategies positioned and used within the spam emails?
While presuppositions can be studied semantically and pragmatically (Spenader, 2002), in the present research the focus is on their representation in critical discourse analysis and their persuasive function in the discourse of financial spam emails."