Facebook Posts of Fraudsters in Networking Businesses: A Discourse Analysis

Mark Suico

Authors

Mark G. Suico Department of Education-Division of Davao City

Keywords:

Applied Linguistics, Fraudsters' Facebook Post, Disclosure Analysis, Philippines

Abstract

Fraudulent networking companies use marketing methods such as Facebook postings to deceive consumers for personal and financial benefit. With such significant financial losses among the victims, one has to question how Filipinos were deceived. The goal of this qualitative study using Discourse Analysis was to investigate the language of fraud used by fraudsters in their Facebook postings in networking enterprises to attract and manipulate naïve victims and investigate the linguistic aspects of such discourse. The study discovered that the Facebook postings of fraudsters have typical elements such as the use of enticing figures, second-person pronouns, appealing negative statements, high-pressure selling techniques, first-person plural pronouns, simple sentence structure, supporting pronouncements, and specificity reduction techniques. Polysemy, compound, colloquial, and syntactic paraphrasing are among the lexico-semantic traits noticed in the usual Facebook postings of fraudsters in networking enterprises. These linguistic characteristics imply that fraudsters utilize terminology that is prevalent among legitimate businesspeople. As a result, spotting such deceptive language can be difficult for the general public and necessitates further understanding.

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