A Critical Analysis of Financial Fraud Spam in English in Terms of Persuasive Strategies: Personalization, Presupposition, and Lexical Choices

Abstract

The term ‘spam' addresses unsolicited emails sent in bulk; therefore, the term<br />‘financial fraud spam' refers to unwanted bulk emails in which different tricks and techniques are<br />employed to swindle money from the recipients. Estimates show that more than 80% of worldwide<br />email traffic in 2011 was spam. It should be noted that while the number of daily spam emails in<br />2002 was 2.4 billion, this number rose to 200 billion spam emails in 2011. Considering the<br />incurred cost of spam emails, finding effective ways for identifying spam emails may help<br />decrease the cost to a great extent. It must be borne in mind that the generators of the financial<br />fraud spam emails employ intricate persuasive strategies that make their stories believable to the<br />readers. In an attempt to unravel some of these persuasive strategies, the present paper focuses on<br />the use of presupposition, personalization, and lexical choice that are frequently used by the<br />generators of the financial fraud spam emails. The results of the analysis showed that the above<br />mentioned persuasive strategies were widely used in the text of financial fraud spam emails.<br />Furthermore, the study demonstrated that persuasive lexical devices were used throughout the<br />spam emails, including the email addresses. In terms of personalization and presupposition, the<br />study showed that all parts of the spam emails, except the address section, were subjected to the<br />use of these persuasive strategies.