A Pragmatic Analysis of the Manipulative Discursive Mechanisms in Cyber Frauds

Abstract

Cyberspace is pivotal for national security and economic development, yet pervasive cyber fraud poses significant threats to societal progress. Through a pragmatic lens, this study reconceptualizes cyber fraud as a strategic discursive manipulation wherein perpetrators systematically violate communicative norms to exploit cognitive biases.  Drawing on real cases, this study identify and analyze its triadic discursive nature which includes dependency on convenient virtual channels enabling rapid, wide dissemination, contradictory double communicative intentions masking self-serving motives beneath a veneer of altruism or mutual benefit; and exploitation of alluring discourse leveraging cognitive biases through inducements to bypass rational scrutiny. This pragmatically grounded analysis reveals how fraudulent discourse actively corrodes networked communication contexts, inflicts multifaceted harm on netizens, and misappropriates language resources.  Consequently, we argue that effective countermeasures necessitate discursive governance, implemented through three key dimensions: regulating platform-based communicative behaviors, deploying counter-discourse campaigns and establishing language standardization frameworks. This analysis, grounded in the Chinese context, offers a linguistically-informed approach to combating cyber fraud with potential cross-cultural relevance.