Graduation Semester and Year
Summer 2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics
Department
Linguistics
First Advisor
Laurel Smith Stvan
Second Advisor
Cynthia Kilpatrick
Third Advisor
Poco Kernsmith
Abstract
Threats can be made without using language at all, but previous research on the language of threats is limited and primarily examines threats with a small amount of constructed data. Building on Austin (1962) and Searle (1965; 1969)’s speech act theory and using a corpus of naturally occurring data consisting of 827 threatening texts from publicly available websites and law enforcement, this dissertation determines what constitutes a threat, as well as the interdependence between words and grammar.
Pragmatically, this dissertation identifies four required felicity conditions that must be met to constitute a threat—building on those set by John Searle, Bruce Fraser, and Douglas Walton— and three optional felicity conditions. This dissertation, however, identifies the speaker’s assuming responsibility for intending to carry out an act as an optional, not required, felicity condition, as well as for conditional threats the speaker hinges an act on the addressee’s state of being, not merely on the addressee’s behavior.
This dissertation identifies threats using four sentence-types—declarative, interrogative, imperative, and truncated declarative— finding the majority to be declaratives and non-conditional threats, differing from previous research suggesting threats are typically conditional. This dissertation examines lexical features, finding that personal pronouns, verbs, and fuck are some of the most frequent and most distinctive words in threats. It also statistically compares the grammatical and lexical features in threats made by terrorists and non-terrorists, finding non-terrorist threats are statistically significantly more likely to be conditional threats, and terrorists are statistically significantly more likely to use we as the subject of the sentence than I.
This corpus-based approach offers a more comprehensive understanding of the speech act theoretical paradigm for threats and lays the groundwork for application in forensic linguistics, discourse analysis, and sociolinguistics, as well as for law enforcement in identifying threat actors before they act upon any threat.
Keywords
Forensic linguistics, Threats, Pragmatics, Speech acts, Corpus linguistics, Fuck, Terrorism, Felicity Conditions, Discourse analysis, Commissive
Disciplines
Discourse and Text Linguistics | Semantics and Pragmatics
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Carter, Natalie Raun, "WHAT’S IN A THREAT: A CORPUS-BASED, SPEECH ACT AND LEXICOGRAMMATICAL APPROACH TO THREATS IN ENGLISH" (2024). Linguistics & TESOL Dissertations. 100.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/linguistics_tesol_dissertations/100