‘Dearest beloved one, I need your assistance’: The rhetoric of spam mail

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Other Title

Authors

Viswamohan, Aysha Iqbal
Hadfield, Jill
Hadfield, Charles

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Degree

Grantor

Date

2010-01

Supervisors

Type

Journal Article

Ngā Upoko Tukutuku (Māori subject headings)

Keyword

spam mail
junk mail
linguistic features
discourse strategies
register
cross-cultural awareness
rhetoric

Citation

Viswamohan, A., Hadfield, C., & Hadfield, J. (2010). ‘Dearest beloved one, I need your assistance’: The rhetoric of spam mail. ELT Journal 64(1), 85-94. doi: 10.1093/elt/ccp086

Abstract

The article offers an overview of strategies deployed by spammers in the Dearly beloved e-mail genre, analyzes the rhetoric of spam mail and considers its implications for teaching and research particularly into English as a lingua franca. Tactics use by spammers are appeal to instincts of greed, creation of a sense of drama and urgency, and appeal to the recipient's pity and enlisting sympathy. Others are creation of rapport, reassurance, cross-cultural glitches, or universal conmanship, and incongruous and unintentionally funny juxtapositions.

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Link to ePress publication

DOI

10.1093/elt/ccp086

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Authors

Copyright notice

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in the ELT Journal following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available online at: http://eltj.oxfordjournals.org/content/64/1/85.full.pdf+html

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