Exploiting Irrational Evaluations: The Discursive Features of Scams Across Genres

Scams are communication practices whose presence online constitutes a dramatic risk for the victims both from a financial and emotional perspective. This study observes what persuasion strategies are common to different types of scams, by focusing on a multi-genre corpus including “419” or “advance-fee fraud” and “romance” scams. In particular, this analysis describes what type of discursive devices are employed to attract the victims’ interest and subsequent trust, to the extent that they may become unable to recognize the linguistic signs which represent clear manifestations of fraud. The main hypothesis is that the scams draw considerably on errors of judgement. Following Lea et al. (2009) and their taxonomy including both motivational and cognitive judgement errors (2009: 25–34), this analysis identifies the persuasive processes adopted by the scammers in order to construct credible narratives.