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The Frames of Romance Scamming

Faber, P. (2024) — Research in Language

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DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.22.1.01 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   Spain
Tags:   AI-Enabled Fraud, Corpus Linguistics, Fraud Language, Grooming Tactics, Offender Tactics, Payment Requests, Romance Scamming, Scripted Communication, Trust Building, Victim Experience
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Synopsis

            
The author compiled a corpus of 53 Facebook-originated conversations with self-identified male romance scammers collected from 2021 to 2023 while posing as a 57-year-old widow. The 65,251-sentence corpus was analyzed in SketchEngine using Concordance, WordSketch, Keywords, and Thesaurus modules, compared against EnglishWeb2021, and interpreted through frame semantics, scripted sub-formats, and Whitty's stage model. The analysis interprets the scam as a commercial transaction disguised as an emerging romantic relationship. The conclusion argues that persuasive language can lead targets to overlook grammatical errors and accept implausible scenarios as plausible. The corpus involves one author acting as the sole target, so interactional patterns may reflect this specific persona and response strategy rather than victim experiences generally.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies a relative lack of research on the language of love fraud, compared with earlier work on Nigerian scam emails. It also notes that linguistic analysis should be used more often in fraud cases. The study addresses this gap by examining authentic scammer-target conversations rather than police reports or victim interviews.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
The author compiled a corpus of 53 Facebook-originated conversations with self-identified male romance scammers collected from 2021 to 2023 while posing as a 57-year-old widow. The 65,251-sentence corpus was analyzed in SketchEngine using Concordance, WordSketch, Keywords, and Thesaurus modules, compared against EnglishWeb2021, and interpreted through frame semantics, scripted sub-formats, and Whitty’s stage model.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The corpus involves one author acting as the sole target, so interactional patterns may reflect this specific persona and response strategy rather than victim experiences generally. Scammer identities and locations were largely unverified: only 18 locations were checked, and 11 of those users employed VPNs. Moreover, only 31 of 53 interactions reached the crisis stage, limiting direct evidence about payment requests.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Future work should apply linguistic analysis more frequently to fraud cases and extend analysis beyond the present corpus. Comparative research could test whether the identified scripts, lexical patterns, and commercial-transaction framing generalize across victims, platforms, scammer groups, and relationship outcomes.

          

              

    
    

        
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