The Principle of Believability in the Language of Fraud Text Messages in Malawi: A Forensic Linguistic Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, Malawi has witnessed an increase in fraud text messages among mobile phone users which are sent by people with malicious intentions of stealing money from the recipients of these short message services (SMSs). However, no study so far has attempted to study what convinces the SMSs recipients to trust the fraud messages. The aim of this study, therefore, was to examine linguistic strategies fraudsters use when crafting text messages in Malawi using a corpus of 26 samples of fraud messages. The study's findings show that fraudsters disguise themselves in different ways. Using Kondowe's Principle of Believability, as the theoretical framework, the paper provides various strategies that fraudsters use to make themselves believable and trusted by the recipients. These findings have huge practical and theoretical implications in the field of Criminology when investigating and profiling offenders in Africa and beyond.