Constructing identities in institutional impersonation fraud: self-styling and other-styling practices through stances

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on the key notions of style/styling and stance as positioning practices, this article analyzes the styling practices of fraudsters in institutional impersonation fraud (IIF), namely, how fraudsters style themselves and others (i.e., targets and opponents) through recurring stance-taking patterns to achieve their manipulative goals. We use the authentic data of 26 IIF cases as research objects. The analysis reveals that fraudsters style themselves through regular stance-taking acts that index professional authority, target avidity, and community integrity, while targets are styled through stances of being troublesome, being innocent, and needing help. Opponents that comprise culprits and obstacles to fraudulent success are consistently assigned negative stances. Additionally, three interactive patterns are found through the configurations of styling practices via stances, namely, the Antagonizing pattern, the Pseudo-allied pattern, and the Selective Stance-accentuation pattern. This study provides a linguistic perspective for understanding the IIF interactive process and sheds light on the ongoing anti-telefraud campaign.