A Critical Analysis Of Telecom And Network Fraud Discourse

In April 2021,Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized the need to resolutely curb the frequent and high incidence of telecom and network fraud.Efforts are made to curb the occurrence of high-incidence cases of impersonating public officials in telecom and network fraud from the source,with particular emphasis on identifying how fraudsters manipulate language to gain trust.Currently,there is limited analysis from a combined macro and micro perspective on specific types of fraudulent discourse.Therefore,this study adopts an interdisciplinary integration approach,utilizing theoretical knowledge and methods from disciplines such as corpus linguistics(CL),systemic functional linguistics(SFL),and critical discourse analysis(CDA).The study focuses on authentic discourse data of telecom and network fraud cases involving impersonation of public officials and employs the UAM Corpus Tool 6.2 analysis software to construct a minicorpus.Building upon Fairclough’s three-dimensional model by enriching and extending it with the meta-functions of systemic functional linguistics and the theory of contextual stratification,the study conducts quantitative and qualitative analysis from the macrolevel social-cultural context to the micro-level perspectives of language resource selection and functional configuration.The aim is to reveal the language system’s resource selection and configuration characteristics of fraudulent discourse involving impersonation of public officials,deconstruct discourse power,social implications,and cultural context reflected in the discourse of fraudsters.Ultimately,this research aims to help the public avoid falling victim to fraud at its source.This study aims to address the following two questions:(1)What are the characteristics of the linguistic resource selection and functional configuration of the fraudulent discourse of impersonating public officials?(2)What are the discourse power,social implications,and cultural context reflected in the characteristics of such fraudulent discourse?Research findings indicate that during the description stage,fraudsters utilize specific language resources such as transitivity,mood,modality,personal pronouns,thematic and information structure to facilitate public compliance with their instructions.In the interpretation stage,the analysis of force,coherence,intertextuality,and register reveals that fraudsters use assertive statements,negative face threats,professional jargon,formal language style,and complex sentences to shape authoritative identities and increase the obedience of their listeners.Polite language and appropriate mood enhance credibility and establish social distance.The explanation stage explores the discourse power relations between fraudsters and listeners,which is reinforced by fraudsters and influences discourse characteristics.Fraudsters rationalize instructions,create a serious atmosphere,emphasize their professional attributes,use urgent language strategies,acquire personal information of their targets,carefully organize their discourse,and utilize the credibility of official information to achieve their fraudulent purposes.In the cultural context of China,where public officials hold authority and are trusted,this contributes to the prevalence of such fraud.However,in order to achieve their fraudulent purposes,some of the linguistic features used by fraudsters deviate from the real social context,such as using exclusive titles,employing professional jargon,unrealistic investigation procedures,threats,and the idea of cooperation with authorities.Overall,this thesis calls for strengthening preventive measures and emphasizes the need to protect personal information and address the public’s knowledge gap about law enforcement procedures.Based on the openness of Fairclough’s three-dimensional model,this thesis supplements and improves it to construct a critical discourse analysis model for telecom and network fraud discourse.From a macro perspective,it comprehensively examines the relationship between fraud discourse and socio-cultural context,providing new perspectives for critical analysis of the fraud discourse.From a micro perspective,it reveals the systematic resource selection and configuration features of fraudulent impersonation of public officials in the discourse,explaining how fraudsters gain trust from their listeners and providing new insights for identifying the fraudulent discourse.Additionally,the small corpus constructed in this thesis provides real language support and multiple resources for analyzing fraudulent discourse and contributes to the construction of a corpus for impersonation of public officials in telecom and network fraud discourse in China.