How to Spot a Scammer: Pragma-Rhetorical and Linguistic Differences Between '419 scam' Emails and Institutional Emails

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How to Spot a Scammer:

Pragma-‐Rhetorical and Linguistic Differences Between

‘419 scam’ Emails and Institutional Emails

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen Linguistics of European Languages: English Soraya Zeeman

begeleider: dr. S.C. Vedder tweede lezer: dr. E.A. Bannink Juni 2016

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email message reaches your inbox. The sender is Sister Kadijat Jubril and the subjects reads ‘Happy new year’. You do not know a Sister Kadijat Jubril but you decide to open the email anyway. The sender of the email introduces herself as the 64 year old widow of Ibrahim Jubril, a wealthy man who was killed during the Ogoni Crisis. After her husband’s death, Kadijat inherited $28.3 million. However, Kadijat is very ill and is looking for someone who can use the money to do good things with after she dies. If you are interested, you only need to give her your full name, address, and telephone number. While receiving $28.3 million sounds great, you are not too certain about the intentions of this Nigerian widow; something seems to be not quite right but you cannot tell exactly what it is. What are the components of the email that make us feel like this is not just another request email like the ones we get every day? Scam emails like the one described here, also called ‘419 scam’ emails, are often recognised as being insincere in intent, but it can be difficult to tell what, apart from the outrageous request, gives it away. This study aims to, from a pragma-‐rhetorical and linguistic perspective, give a clearer view on exactly why these emails seem insincere. This study will compare two email corpora, a scam email corpus and an institutional request email corpus, on three different pragma-‐rhetorical and linguistic aspects. This study will first look at the treatment of Grice’s conversational maxims (Grice 1975). According to Grice, interlocutors should want to respect these maxims if their aim is to have a polite conversation. The maxims state that interlocutors should be truthful, that they should give the right amount of information, that they should speak in an unambiguous manner, and that they should stick to the topic of conversation. The failure to respect these guidelines is called a violation and can create a new context. While interlocutors violate or flout these maxims for several reasons, it is interesting to see how these maxims are treated in different types of request email. Therefore this study will look at how often the emails in both corpora violate these maxims. This study will also look at previous research done on openings and closings in (email) conversations (Crystal 2006; Waldvogel 2007) to analyse the openings and closings of scam emails and institutional request emails. The aim is to see if the way in which scam emails open and close is different from the way institutional request emails open and close.

This study will also analyse the use of modifiers. A considerable amount of research has been done on the use of internal and external modifiers in requests (Alcón Soler 2013; Barron 2003; Blum-‐ Kulka 1989; Economidou-‐Kogetsidis 2008; Hassall 2001). The usage of modifiers is related to the notion of imposition (Brown & Levinson 1987). Requests can have a low degree of imposition, like asking to borrow a pen, or a high degree of imposition, like borrowing a lot of money. Generally, an

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increase of imposition implies an increase of modifiers/politeness. This study will compare the use of modifiers in both scam emails and institutional request emails. Since maxims, openings and closings, and modifiers all influence the politeness of communication in their own way, they will be called politeness-‐related notions in this study.

In order to find the pragma-‐rhetorical differences between ‘419 scam’ emails and institutional request emails this study will use two small corpora; one consisting of scam emails and one consisting of request emails sent within organisations (between university staff and student, employer and employee, and employee and customer). The scam email corpus is made up of 60 ‘419 scam’ emails, almost all of them from Africa. These scam emails all contain one or more requests regarding the transfer of money. The institutional request email corpus is made up of 25 emails. The requests in this corpus are mainly concerned with asking for help in completing a task. In order to make a good comparison the emails from both corpora are all similar in the relationship between sender and recipient and type of speech act, namely the request. The results should point out the pragma-‐rhetorical and linguistic differences between both corpora. Before this study moves on to the results section, chapter two, the theoretical framework, will discuss some of the aforementioned politeness-‐related notions (Grice’s Maxims [Grice 1975], openings & closings, and modifiers). The third chapter will elaborate on the characteristics of institutional emails and ‘419 scam’ emails and the use of opening and closings in email. Chapter four will discuss the corpora and the methodology of the study. Chapter five and six will discuss the results and how they relate to the theories discussed in chapter two and three. Suggestions for further research will also be given. The findings should shed a light on whether there are indeed pragma-‐rhetorical differences between request emails sent by people such as Sister Kadijat Jubril and request emails we receive from employers, teachers, and members of staff. Before we come to this point, however, it is necessary to discuss the theoretical framework that was used for the analysis.

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2. Theoretical Framework

This study will focus on two corpora of request emails from a pragma-‐rhetoric angle. The analysis will look at the treatment of Grice’s (1975) maxims, the use of openings and closings, and the use of modifiers. But what do these three notions have to do with request emails? How are they linked to requests and what effect do they have on politeness? The following chapter aims to answer these questions by first explaining the nature of requests and the impact they have on interlocutors. It will then discuss how the three previously mentioned notions can be used in combination with requests and what sort of effect they have on the request and the hearer.

2.1 Speech acts & Politeness Theory

When communicating, interlocutors often have a certain goal or expectation. For example, this can be to congratulate or compliment the hearer. These goals can usually be accomplished by uttering a congratulatory statement or a compliment. The goal of the speaker would be more difficult to achieve if they were to make a request. Whereas the congratulation and the compliment do not impose on the freedom of the hearer, the request does. In order to appear polite and decrease the degree of imposition on the hearer, the speaker can use several pragma-‐rhetorical devices. In order to understand the theoretical underpinnings of this study, it is necessary to discuss what exactly requests are, how they affect the degree of politeness experienced by the hearer, and what can be done to make requests less of an imposition on the hearer.

2.1.1 Speech Acts

Apart from physical acts such as jumping, cooking, and running, we also accomplish goals through what are called ‘speech acts’. This type of act is verbal and uses language to accomplish its goals. Every day we perform many different types of speech acts. The American philosopher John Searle distinguished five different types of speech acts (1975). The first type of speech act is the representative. The representative often present a state of affairs (e.g. statements and descriptions). Examples are ‘The ball is red’ and ‘I am happy’. Representatives can often be said to be either true or false (Finegan 2008: 284). The second type of speech act in Searle’s classification is the expressive. Expressives are said to show the speaker’s attitude or psychological state. Think for example of greetings (‘It’s nice to see you’) or condolences (‘I am sorry for your loss’). Searle’s (1975) third type of speech act is the commissive. Commissives commit the speaker to a future course of action. This includes promises (‘I will do it tomorrow’) and threats (‘I will kill her’). The fourth type of speech act is the declarative. According to Finegan (2008) they “bring about the state of affairs they name”

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(284). This means that by uttering a declarative the speaker declares a new fact. Think for example of marrying (‘I now declare you man and wife’) and firing (‘You are fired’). The last type of speech act classified by Searle (1975) is the directive. They instruct the hearer to do something. Think of commands (‘Do the dishes’), advice (‘You should buy that dress’), dares (‘I dare you to kiss him’), and the most important speech act for this study: the request. Unlike the other speech acts, directives have a high chance of being perceived as impolite because they threaten something called the ‘face’ of the hearer and the speaker (Goffman 1967).

2.1.2 Politeness Theory

In 1987, Brown and Levinson formulated an idea called ‘politeness theory’. This theory, mainly concerned with politeness in social encounters, relied heavily on the concept of ‘face’. This concept was first described by Erving Goffman (1967) as: “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Goffman 1967: 5). Briefly said, face refers to an individual’s public self-‐image. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), face consists of two aspects called the negative and the positive face. Positive face is concerned with getting approval from others while negative face is concerned with freedom of action and not being imposed on by others. Brown and Levinson claim that face is something that “can be lost, maintained, or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 61). In most social encounters, “it is in the participants’ best interest to maintain each other’s faces” (Brown & Levinson 1987: 61), meaning that both participants will try to be as polite as needed. However, while there might be a wish to maintain both the speaker’s and the hearer’s face, sometimes interlocutors cannot help but threaten their own face and that of the other while uttering certain speech acts. Brown and Levinson (1987) call these occurrences face-‐threatening acts (FTA’s) (65). Some examples of speech acts that can threaten positive face are disapproval, disagreement, complaints, since they impend on one’s desire for approval. Negative face can be threatened by warnings, threats, and requests since they impend on the desire for freedom of action. There are, however, several ways to make a request less face threatening. The following sections will explain what kind of strategies can be employed to mitigate the force of a request and to increase the chances of the hearer wanting to fulfil the request.

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2.2 Grice’s Conversational Maxims

One of the politeness-‐related notions that speakers can employ to make a request more polite is the cooperative principle as formulated in 1975 by the British philosopher Paul Grice (1913 – 1988). The following sections will explain how Grice’s cooperative principle relates to politeness and how the emails in this study’s corpora might use the cooperative principle to increase the chances of their request being fulfilled.

2.2.1 The Cooperative Principle

There are several types of communication. It can be done through face-‐to-‐face conversations but also through digital means such as email, text, and chat. Regardless of the type of communication, the interlocutors are usually, apart from occasional misunderstandings, able to understand utterances as how they were intended by the speaker. How do they do this? The conversation works because the interlocutors “trust that they and their conversational partner are honouring the same interpretive conventions” (Finegan 2008: 287). The hearer assumes that the speaker has honoured the conventions of interpretation when making an utterance. The speaker must assume that the hearer upholds the same conventions, but also that the hearer trusts the speaker to have upheld the conventions of interpretation. This means that a successful conversation mostly depends on the hearer and speaker both cooperating by using the conventions of interpretation. What exactly is this “unspoken pact” (Finegan 2008: 287)? In 1975, Paul Grice formulated an idea he called the cooperative principle. Grice wrote: “[m]ake your conversational contribution such as is required, at the state as which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged” (1975: 45). The cooperative principle describes the unspoken pact that both interlocutors have to honour for the conversation to be successful. Assuming that the senders of the emails in this study’s corpora aim to come across as polite as to increase the chances of their requests being accepted, we can expect them to honour Grice’s cooperative principle. More specifically, we can expect them to honour the four general principles (maxims) that the cooperative principle consist of according to Grice (1975).

2.2.2 Maxim of Quantity

The first maxim is concerned with the amount of information a speaker is expected to give. The Maxim of Quantity states that the speaker is expected give as much information as necessary for the hearer to understand the utterance but no more than that; the amount of information should just be enough. Let us imagine a conversation between two friends. Friend A is planning on going to the beach and he tells Friend B this and asks him what the weather will be like. If Friend B wants to

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honour the Maxim of Quantity, and by doing that the Cooperative Principle, an appropriate answer could be ‘25 degrees’. The Maxim of Quantity suggests that this is all the information that Friend B needs to give in order to answer Friend A’s question. It implies that Friend B cannot think of anything else that would be relevant for Friend A’s potential beach trip. However, ’25 degrees’ could still be a truthful answer even if there would be a storm that day. Technically speaking Friend B told the truth with ’25 degrees’ but according to the Maxim of Quantity Friend B is expected to give more information if there were to be a storm that day; in that case a truthful ’25 degrees’ would not be enough. Linking this to the topic of requests, ‘Can you help me next month?’ displays a lack of information. What type of help does the speaker need and when exactly is this help needed? If the hearer is unaware of the context of the request, the speaker has not provided the hearer with sufficient information.

Whereas the previous example is an instance of not enough information being given, the Maxim of Quantity can also be violated through too much information being given. Scam emails are often guilty of giving too much information to evoke sympathy from the recipient. Requests are often preceded by an elaborate account of the miserable history of the scammer that has little to do with the actual request. People who violate the Maxim of Quantity, either by giving too little information or too much, are usually seen as unpleasant to talk with. They can be regarded as being mysterious or shy when giving too little information, or as overly talkative when giving too much information (Finegan 2008: 288). The authors of the emails in the corpora should thus want to appear polite by giving the right amount of information.

2.2.3 Maxim of Relevance

Leech (1983) describes the Maxim of Relevance, sometimes also called the Maxim of Relation, as:

"[a]n utterance U is relevant to a speech situation if U can be interpreted as contributing to the conversational goal(s) of speaker or hearer" (Leech 1983: 94). Briefly said, the speakers should answer in a way that is relevant to what is being uttered at the time. In the following example, the Maxim of Relevance is violated:

Person A: What is your favourite animal?

Person B: Anne is obsessed with sloths. I

It seems that Person B’s response is completely irrelevant; the speaker asks for Person B’s favourite animal and Person B responds with someone else’s favourite animal. Usually when the Maxim of Relevance is violated, people look for the reason why it was violated; they look for what the violation implies. A reason for violating the Maxim of Relevance is not wanting to talk about a certain topic, or attempting to make a joke (Finegan 2008: 288). The implicature of a violation can often be derived

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topic to avoid confusion on the part of the hearer. After all, confusing the hearer does not bring the speaker any closer to achieving the goal of the request.

2.2.4 Maxim of Manner

Unlike the other maxims, the Maxim of Manner is not concerned with what is said. Grice (1975) describes the Maxim of Manner as not relating to what is said but rather to how it is said (46). The Maxim of Manner consists of multiple rules that people are expected to follow: avoid obscurity of expression, avoid ambiguity, avoid unnecessary prolixity, and be orderly (Grice 1975: 45-‐46). To better understand these rules some examples of violations of these rules will be provided in the following passage.

The first rule concerns obscurity of expression; what is said must be clear. The following shows how this rule can be violated:

Person A: Are you coming to the club tonight?

Person B: En Oh Tee Aitch Ay En Kay Es.

Person B could have said ‘no thanks’ to avoid confusion on the part of the hearer. The following example of an ambiguous statement is just as confusing:

Person A: What did you see?

Person B: I saw her duck.

This can either mean that Person B saw the duck that belonged to Person C or that Person B saw Person C squat down. The speaker could have done more to avoid ambiguity in this sentence. The next example from Levinson (1983) illustrates the use of unnecessary prolixity:

Person A: You went to the opera, didn’t you? How was the singer?

Person B: The singer produced a series of sounds corresponding closely to the score of an aria

from 'Rigoletto' (Levinson 1983: 112).

While it might seem like this is a violation of the Maxim of Quantity because of the long answer, the violations refers to the manner in which the answer was given. The content of the answer does not give more information than is necessary, hence this is a violation of the Maxim of Manner rather than a violation of the Maxim of Quantity. The last three examples illustrate that we should expect the requests in the corpora to be formulated in a clear and unambiguous manner to avoid confusing the recipient of the email.

The last rule of the Maxim of Manner is related to the order of the sentence. Speakers of English usually prefer the events described in a sentence to be in chronological order (Finegan 2008: 288). The following example does not follow that order: ‘Max moved to New York when he got married,

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his life.’ The events in this sentence are clearly not in chronological order. The same can be applied to

the way emails are structured. We should expect the senders of the emails in this study’s corpora to introduce themselves before making their requests. A violation of this order can be seen as a violation of the Maxim of Manner.

2.2.5 Maxim of Quality

The Maxim of Quality, the fourth and last one, is concerned with the truth of an utterance. It consists of two parts: the speaker should not say what they believe to be false and they should not say something for which they lack adequate evidence. If the cashier at the local supermarket claims that he is the president of the United States, both rules are violated. It should be noted that the Maxim of Quality could be considered one of the most important maxims, as the violation of this maxim makes nearly all other maxims irrelevant. If something is a lie, it does not matter if the chronological order is correct, it is still a lie. The same goes for too much or too little information; the amount does not matter if the content is a lie. This means that scammers, who are known to make up a false backstory (see section 3.3.2), consistently violate the Maxim of Quality.

2.2.6 Violation (implicatures)

As seen in the examples that were given in previous sections, language-‐users often violate the principles set by Grice. Someone may lie on purpose or be unintelligible because they are nervous or not fluent in the language they are attempting to speak. In his article, Grice (1975) came up with three different ways in which someone can fail to observe these maxims: a speaker can opt out of a maxim, they can flout a maxim, or they can violate a maxim. When speakers opt out of a maxim they show that they are unwilling to do what the maxim would require of them (such as being truthful or giving enough information). Consider the following example: Person A has bought a book but has not read it yet. Person B asks Person A whether they enjoyed the book. The Maxim of Quantity suggests Person A should be as informative as is required, but the Maxim of Quality suggests that one should not say something for which they lack evidence. Person A must choose between giving the information needed and not saying something for which they lack evidence. By stating that they have not read the book yet Person A opts out of the Maxim of Quantity but they observe the Maxim of Quality (Martinich 1984: 36).

Another manner in which a speaker can non-‐observe a maxim is by flouting it. When a maxim is flouted, the speaker deliberately does not observe it. Thomas (1995) claims a maxim is flouted when “[a] speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wishes to prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from, or in

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addition to, the expressed meaning” (Thomas 1995: 65). Briefly said, speakers flout a maxim because they want the hearer to understand what they are implicating by doing so. The following examples show why maxims are often flouted. Person A had an exciting date this weekend and Person B, who wants to know all about the date, asks Person A how the date was. If Person A were to respond with ‘it was okay’ then the Maxim of Quantity is obviously not observed; Person B expects much more information. In this case, it seems like Person A is flouting the Maxim of Quantity because they do not want to discuss the topic. The implication of this short answer is that Person B should move on to a different topic. Consider the same situation again. Person B asks Person A about the date. If Person A responded with ‘lovely weather, isn’t it?’ they are flouting the Maxim of Relevance. Again, the implication is that Person A does not want to talk about this particular topic.

Violation of a maxim can be seen as the “unostentatious or ‘quiet’ non-‐observance of a maxim” (Dinu 2012: 18). According to Grice (1975), a speaker who violates the maxims “will be liable to mislead” (Grice 1975: 49). Unlike the flouting of a maxim, the violation of a maxim does not encourage the hearer to look for hidden or implied meanings; in fact, hearers are encouraged to take the utterance at face value. This is also the case in scam emails. The authors fabricate a story not to urge the recipient to look for further meaning, which is what happens when a maxim is flouted, rather they urge the recipient to believe what they have been told. The details of a scam email are carefully planned by the scammer and aim to deceive the recipient.

Summarizing, if interlocutors want their utterances to achieve the desired goal, they need to cooperate. This is explained in the cooperative principle which states that both hearer and speaker need to follow a set of guidelines called maxims. Since the authors of the emails in this study’s corpora aim to have their request fulfilled by the recipient, it is necessary to downtone the illocutionary force of the request. Subsequently, this means that we can expect emails to never violate Grice’s maxims.

2.3 Modifiers

As discussed in the previous part of this chapter, speech acts, especially requests, can have a high degree of imposition. The term imposition is linked to Brown and Levinson’s (1987) face-‐ threatening acts (see section 2.1.2). It was already discussed that requests threaten the face of the hearer by imposing on their freedom of action. The more a request imposes on the freedom of the hearer, the higher the degree of imposition is. For example, asking to borrow a pencil is a request with low imposition. Asking to borrow 500 euros is a request with high imposition. In order to avoid damage to the hearer’s face, the speaker will need to mitigate the force of the request. One way of doing this is by using modifiers. This section aims to give an explanation of what modifiers are, what

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types of modifiers there are, and how they are used. In short, modifiers and hedges are used to modify the degree of imposition on the hearer; when used in the formulation of a request they should reduce the degree of imposition. How much the degree of imposition is reduced depends on the modifiers that are used. After all, a direct order is less polite than an indirect request that contains modifiers. Since interlocutors generally aim to be polite, and politeness can be achieved through the use of modifiers in requests, we should expect to find a large amount of modifiers. The fact that the senders and recipients in both corpora do not know each other only lends to the expectation that many modifiers will be used to mitigate the force of the request. As Codina-‐Espurz (2008) states, “strangers […] tend to use more modifiers” (Codina-‐Espurz 2008: 252). The relationship between sender and recipient is not the only aspect that has an influence on the amount of modifiers used. Félix-‐Brasdefer (2012) claims that the amount of modifiers “[is] conditioned by the level of imposition of the request” (Félix-‐Brasdefer 2012: 114). This means that scam emails, with their high degree of imposition, are expected to use more modifiers than institutional request emails.

We can also expect to find several types of modifiers. A request can be modified through lexical, phrasal and syntactic choices as well as through elements that precede or follow the actual request (Achiba 2003: 132-‐133). These two different types are called internal modification and external modification respectively. Both of these groups consist of types of modifiers: ‘downgraders’ and ‘upgraders’. The first will tone down the impact a speech act has on the hearer, while the latter will most likely increase the impact (Trosborg 1995: 214). Since this study is concerned with the mitigation of requests, only downgraders will be discussed. In order for the reader to understand which modifiers and hedges will be looked at in the analysis, it is necessary to briefly discuss the downgraders that internal modification and external modification consist of.

2.3.1 Internal Modifiers: Syntactic

The first kind of internal modifier that will be discussed is the syntactic modifier. The syntactic modifier is made up of several types. Most of these types, as argued by Trosborg (1995), aim to “distance the request from reality” (Trosborg 1995: 209). The politeness of the request increases because the expectations regarding the request are toned down. Mitigation works in two ways in this case; because of the requester’s low expectations a possible rejection will not cause much face loss. On the other hand, mitigation makes it easier for the hearer to reject the request. One (rather obvious) way of making a request more polite is by asking, instead of ordering.

(1) Can you give me a ride? (2) Give me a ride.

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Since we can assume that the senders of the emails in both corpora aim to be polite, we should expect to find questions rather than orders. Questioning can be combined with several other modifiers to reduce the degree of imposition even more. One of these modifiers is aspect. Aspect can consist of the use of past tense or durative aspect. Using aspect as a downgrader creates a certain kind of distance. A request can also be mitigated by the speaker expressing their appreciation or desire for a certain situation. This type of modifier is called the subjunctive. Another downgrader that can be combined with a question is negation. By stating that they are uncertain of the outcome of the request the speaker downtones the expectations, creating the same two-‐fold effect that was discussed before; the hearer does not feel obliged and the speaker does not lose face. The negation introduces another downtoner that can be combined with a question, namely the tag question. Tag questions “appeal to the hearer’s consent” (Trosborg 1995: 210) and therefore tone down the degree of imposition. The speaker could also employ the conditional, the conditional clause, and the conditional formula to distance themselves from the reality of the FTA. Not all syntactic modifiers occur in combination with a question. The speaker might also use an embedded appreciative clause to mitigate the force of a request. This process is called appreciative embedding. These embedded clauses, as the name suggests, often show appreciation. The following table gives an overview of the syntactic modifiers that were previously discussed:

Table 1: Overview of types of syntactic modifiers

Syntactic modifiers Examples

Past tense Might I ask for your help?

Negation You couldn’t help me, could you?

Tag question You couldn’t help me, could you?

Aspect I’m wondering if you can help.

Appreciative embedding I would appreciate it if you could help.

Subjunctive I suggest you help me.

Conditional Would you help me?

Conditional clause What would you say if I asked you to help me?

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2.3.2 Internal Modifiers: Lexical/Phrasal

The politeness marker is perhaps the lexical/phrasal modifier that is used most often. Examples of politeness markers are ‘please’ and ‘kindly’. When a speaker chooses to use a politeness marker like ‘please’ or ‘kindly’ it “signal[s] politeness and [it can] elicit cooperative behaviour from his or her addressee” (Achiba 2003: 133). Since eliciting cooperative behaviour is the aim of a request we can expect the requests in our corpora to contain many politeness markers.

The second lexical/phrasal modifier, the subjectiviser, shows that not all modifiers are related to questions. Imposition can also be reduced by adding an additional clause or phrase. By adding this clause or phrase the speaker creates a distance between the request and reality (Trosborg 1995: 210-‐ 211). It also reduces “the assertive force of the request” (Achiba 2003: 136). When using subjectivisers, the speaker starts the request with a phrase that conveys their attitude towards the request. Because there are numerous ways in which someone can express their feelings, there are also several types of subjectivisers such as subjective subjectivisers and tentative subjectivisers. Because the subjective phrase expresses the personal belief of the speaker, the degree of imposition is reduced. For example, the phrase ‘I’m afraid’ expresses the fact that the speaker feels sorry for the hearer which creates a more personal bond. Another type of lexical/phrasal modifier is the appealer. When using an appealer, the speaker adds a tag at the end of the sentence. When adding this tag, the speaker asks for the hearer’s understanding and consent which downtones the degree of imposition. However, the appealer is not the only type of modifier that asks for the hearer’s understanding; the speaker could also use a consultative device. The consultative device does not only ask the hearer for their understanding, it also actively involves them by asking for their cooperation. Something similar happens when the speaker uses another modifier called a downtoner. This modifier mitigates the force of the request through lexical items that suggest the possible non-‐compliance of the hearer.

While appealers, consultative devices and downtoners ask for the involvement and understanding of the hearer, there are also several lexical/phrasal modifiers that try to downtone the imposition in another way. For example, the understater tries to minimise part of the request by under-‐representing the situation (Blum-‐Kulka 1989: 204). Something similar happens when using hedges. When employing hedges the speaker intentionally creates a grey area regarding the content of the request, how it should be performed, when it should be performed, or any other aspect. The following table gives an overview of the different types of lexical/phrasal modifiers:

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Table 2: Overview of lexical/phrasal modifiers

2.3.3 External Modifiers

As mentioned before, internal modifiers are not the only kind of modifiers. The second group is called external modifiers. Whereas internal modifiers mitigate the imposition from within (internally), external modifiers use external supportive moves to achieve the same. Similar to the internal modifiers, there are many types of external modifiers. One of these is called a grounder. Through using a grounder the speaker can choose to give a supportive reason to explain and justify the request (‘Could you do the dishes? I already did the cooking’). Because of the supportive reason the hearer might be more willing to fulfil the request. Another type of modifier that give a supportive reason is the specifier. The specifier has a purpose that is much like that of the downtoner that was discussed in the section on internal modifiers. It aims to downtone the imposition by minimising part of the request (‘Can I borrow your notes? It’s just for chapter one’). While both the downtoner and the specifier minimise part of the request, downtoners are less specific than specifiers. This is shown in table 3. In order to make fulfulling the request more appealing to the hearer the speaker could use a warrant. Using a warrant reassures the reader that fulfilling the request will not have any negative effects on them (‘Could you lend me your car? I’ll return it in perfect condition’). This makes it easier for the hearer to accept the request. The warrant consists of two sub-‐types: the positive warrant and the negative warrant. The positive warrant, much like appreciative embedding, assures the hearer that their compliance will have a positive result (‘Can you help me? I’ll give you $50 if you do’). The

Lexical/phrasal modifiers Examples

Politeness marker Could you please walk the dog?

Subjectiviser I’m afraid you’ll have to work tomorrow as well.

Appealer You can carry the books, okay?

Consultative device Do you think you could help us out?

Downtoner Perhaps you would like to have a coffee with me?

Understater Could you give me a little bit of your food?

Hedge Could you help me with something?

Can you do something to fix my laptop? Can you help me with the floor sometime?

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positive warrant is different from appreciative embedding because it occurs in a separate sentence after the request whereas appreciative embedding is an added clause. This positive results could either be the gratefulness of the speaker or a reward. The negative warrant assures the hearer that not complying with the request will have a negative effect on either the speaker or the hearer (‘Can you help me? I’ll feel devastated if you won’t’).

Whereas the external modifiers discussed in the previous paragraph are mainly lexical/phrasal elements that are added after the request the modifiers in this paragraph all occur before the request. One type of pre-‐request modifier speakers can choose to use is the preparator. When a speaker requires something with a high degree of imposition from the hearer it is necessary to carefully prepare the request. There are several ways of doing that. The speaker can start by preparing the content, preparing the speech act, checking the availability, or getting a pre-‐ commitment (Trosborg 1995). By preparing the content the speaker makes sure that the requests fits naturally into the context (‘I’m looking forward to Carol’s party. Speaking of which, can I borrow your dress?’). If the hearer is already aware of the fact that the speaker needs something, it might warn them that the request will be brought up. By preparing the speech act the speaker lets the hearer know about the request in a more direct way (‘I need your help. I can’t move the piano on my own’). By checking whether the hearer is available to fulfil the request the speaker makes sure that the request will not be rejected because of unavailability on the hearer’s part (‘Are you free tomorrow morning? I need someone to babysit Samuel’). Asking about the hearer’s availability can also prevent the hearer from coming up with a possible excuse as to why they have to reject the request (Trosborg 1995). By asking whether the hearer is willing to help, the speaker secures commitment after which they are free to go ahead with the actual request (‘Would you help me with something?’). It is possible, however, for the hearer to respond with another question regarding the content of the request, in which case the preparatory question will have been without success. Another type of modifier that occurs before the request is the alerter. The alerter is used to get the attention of the hearer and to mitigate the illocutionary force (‘Excuse me, could you let me pass?’). Pre-‐request mitigation can also be realised by using a disarmer. By using a disarmer before the request, the speaker lets the hearer know that they have sympathy for their situation (‘I know you’re really busy, but could you give me a hand?’). This creates a friendly atmosphere which might lead to the hearer wanting to comply with the speaker’s wishes. The use of a disarmer also anticipates possible objections that the hearer might have. If the hearer rejects on grounds of what the disarmer already anticipated, the speaker does not lose face as easily. The table below provides an overview of the external modifiers discussed in this section:

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Table 3: Overview of external modifiers

Section 2.3 has shown that there are several ways that a request can be mitigated. The speaker can choose to use internal modifiers. These modifiers modify the request from within by using either syntactic or lexical/phrasal choices. The speaker can also choose to use external modifiers. These modifiers downtone the imposition from outside by using phrases that either precede or follow the actual request. However, the use of modifiers is not the only way to downtone the imposition of the request. There is another way to appear polite, namely by starting and ending your emails with openings and closings. Chapter three will discuss the characteristics of institutional emails and scam emails and the function of using openings and closings in email.

External modifier Examples

Grounder Could you do the dishes? I already did the cooking.

Specifier Can I borrow your notes? It’s just for chapter one.

Warrant Could you lend me your car? I’ll return it in perfect condition.

Positive warrant Can you help me? I’ll give you $50 if you do.

Negative warrant Can you help me? I’ll feel devastated if you won’t.

Preparator I’m looking forward to Carol’s party. Speaking of which, can I borrow your dress?

I need your help. I can’t move the piano on my

own.

Are you free tomorrow morning? I need someone to babysit Samuel.

Would you help me with something?

Alerter Excuse me, could you let me pass?

Disarmer I know you’re really busy, but could you give me a hand?

How to Spot a Scammer: Pragma-Rhetorical and Linguistic Differences Between '419 scam' Emails and Institutional Emails