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Categorization of Threatening Speech Acts

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Speech and Computer (SPECOM 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 13721))

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Abstract

The paper explores the notion of threatening speech act which is defined as an intentional speech action aimed at suppressing the will of other people and deterioration of their mental state. Based on semantic and pragmatic features of threatening speech acts described in the literature we build a dataset out of randomly collected messages containing verbalized threats presented open access on different Internet social networks sites, Internet forums and Internet messengers. A total number of 68 messages dated from 2015 to 2021 in Russian language are manually processed using contextual analysis and methods of Forensic Linguistics. Categorization method based on (1) type of addressor’s intention, (2) direction of threatening speech act, and (3) type of threatening speech act gave a matrix proving our research hypothesis, that among the analyzed messages the most frequent type of threatening speech acts are threats-punishments towards addressees aiming at harming their lives or health. At the same time the prevalent communicative intention of the addressor in such threatening speech acts is the realization of psycho-emotional affect in the form of a threat and the desire to demonstrate the “power” in communication.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Contextual analysis is based on the idea that the statement gets meaning in a situational and social context and is the function of this context [1, p. 46–49].

  2. 2.

    When analyzing a disputed text through Forensic Linguistic procedure an expert uses general scientific methods such as analysis and synthesis, and specific linguistic methods such as semantic-syntactic, lexical-semantic, functional-stylistic, grammatical, functional-pragmatic types of analysis, analysis of the communicative structure of text organization, analysis of presuppositions, analysis of propositions, component analysis, content analysis, contextual analysis [13].

  3. 3.

    Translation from Russian into English is made by the authors of this paper. We tried to convey the author style of writing in punctuation marks, but failed to convey all the syntax and lexical peculiarities presented in original messages in Russian language.

  4. 4.

    According to Article 137 “Animals” of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, «the general rules about the property are applied to animals since other laws or other legal acts are not established» [8].

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Acknowledgements

The research is carried out within the framework of the state assignment to the Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution «Moscow State Linguistic University», project No FSFU-2020-0020 «Perspective technologies of Government’s informational function realization and maintenance of digital sovereignty».

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 51/21, Nakhimovsky Prospect, 117418, Moscow, Russia

    Liliya Komalova

  2. Moscow State Linguistic University, 38, Ostozhenka Street, 119034, Moscow, Russia

    Liliya Komalova & Lyubov Kalyuzhnaya

Authors
  1. Liliya Komalova
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  2. Lyubov Kalyuzhnaya
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Liliya Komalova .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Indian Institute of Technology Dharwad, Dharwad, India

    S. R. Mahadeva Prasanna

  2. St. Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Alexey Karpov

  3. Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Vaddeswaram, India

    K. Samudravijaya

  4. KIIT Group of Colleges, Gurugram, India

    Shyam S. Agrawal

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Komalova, L., Kalyuzhnaya, L. (2022). Categorization of Threatening Speech Acts. In: Prasanna, S.R.M., Karpov, A., Samudravijaya, K., Agrawal, S.S. (eds) Speech and Computer. SPECOM 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13721. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20980-2_32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20980-2_32

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-20980-2

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