Abstract:
This paper mainly aims at analyzing how various discursive strategies legitimizing different
requests and assertions in phishing emails are exploited to exercise the social power abuse
and influence cognitive knowledge of the users. This study attempts to interlock Van
Leeuwen and Wodak’s (1999) four legitimization strategies and Van Dijk’s (1998, 2001,
2006) ‘triangulation approach’ of discourse-society-cognition cycle in order to analyze the
legitimization strategies in phishing from a critical discourse perspective. The discursive
approach includes the discursive strategies in legitimation, the social approach shows the
social power abuse engaged in legitimization, and the cognitive approach presents the
manipulation of the user’s beliefs influencing their actions. In order to conduct this study,
qualitative method is applied in randomly selected 25 phishing emails as textual data.
