ANALYTICAL STUDY OF DISCOURSE STRATEGIES IN INTERNET BEGGING RELATING TO FINANCIAL INCAPACITY

Internet begging is a relatively new discourse genre. It is the online version of traditional begging, which is asking strangers for money to meet immediate and other needs such as money, food, and shelter. E-begging employs various discourse strategies which may appear vague or inexplicit. Correct interpretation of begging texts may evade the readers who do not understand the particular socio-cultural environment. The data for this study which comprised of sixty internet beggars’ texts from two very popular internet begging websites were carefully selected. Thirty begging texts relating to financial incapability were selected from each of the websites. The texts were posted by the beggars between December, 2012 and February, 2013. This study adopted both the Pragma-Rhetorical theory and Critical Discourse Analysis approaches (see Watson and Hill (1993:146), Kennedy (1998) and Babatunde (2000:150)). Many internet beggars register on the sites with different socio-economic problems, different linguistic appealing modes etc. The words ‘need’ and ‘help’ signify a kind of logical use of language by beggars in distress or desperation to draw the attention of the audience to their situation through their language prowess. It was discovered that the proposition of five speech acts of the expressives, the commissives, the assertives or representatives, the directives and the declaratives by Searle (1969) was effectively employed by the e-beggars. Various discursive strategies of communicative strategies like persuasive strategies, politeness strategies and storytelling strategies were also employed in the e-begging texts. The internet beggars’ used every available rhetorical strategy in the communicative process as well as to create intended effects. This paper recommends that e-beggars should try to avoid using the speech acts of the directives. Also, website owners should device means of educating prospective e-beggars on appropriate language skills and discursive strategies.