CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
This chapter presents the general overview of this research work as
well as its significance and statement of problems and also possible
solution to those problems as this study is aimed to achieve.
1.1 BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
Scam mails are a form of financial fraud in which huge offers of
money are made to people provided they pass on bank details and other
personal information to the perpetrator. This kind of message presents
us with a typical instance of globalized communication, they are
produced in the margins of the world and sent to other places; they are
electronically mediated and they are written in varieties of world
languages, mostly English.
Patterns in content include similar narratives involving vast sums of
money to be transferred from the scammer’s home country with outside
help and common persuasive strategies frequently involving apologies,
flattery, attempts to intrigue, trust and religious feelings while
patterns in writing features include use of attention inducing buzz
words like “urgent’’ and “secret’’ in subject headings
as well as in the letters themselves, and obvious nonnative English
grammar, mechanics and vocabulary errors. Inspite of the cruder elements of
these letters and worldwide efforts to fight the con artists sending
them, recipients are still drawn into these scams in large numbers, losing huge
sums of money every year. The best defense against them must still entail
comprehensive public education about the nature of this scam.
For now, it still seems likely that for every antiscam measure
someone develops, scammers will devise a counter measure. Perhaps, then
preventing scam from reaching personal computers might better be treated
as a secondary concern, the primary goal should infact be the education
of netizens to recognize deceptive content, specious persuasive
strategies, inaccurate and unfair stereotypes of a scam when they see
them ensuring that they will avoid becoming its next victim.
1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
In scam messages,authors claim particular identities and
relationships and have to do so using specific,generically regimented
forms of communication.Investigating such forms yields a complex view of
what it takes to communicate in a globalized environment at least three
different forms of communicative competence seem to be blended.