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The discursive representation of online grooming in children’s accounts within child help line contexts
,
Andrea García-Montes ,
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
ELUA: Estudios de Lingüística. Universidad de Alicante, Volume: 41, Issue: 41, Pages: 5 - 20
Swansea University Author:
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
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Copyright 2024 Carmen Pérez Sabater, Andrea García-Montes, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .
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DOI (Published version): 10.14198/elua.23549
Abstract
This article pioneers analysis of children’s experiences of Online Child Sexual Grooming (OCSG) as relayed to counsellors at a child helpline in Spain. The data comprises the transcribed record of all the child-counsellor telephone conversations about OCSG made to Fundación ANAR’s child helpline ser...
| Published in: | ELUA: Estudios de Lingüística. Universidad de Alicante |
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| ISSN: | 2171-6692 |
| Published: |
Universidad de Alicante Servicio de Publicaciones
2024
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| Online Access: |
Check full text
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa65519 |
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| Abstract: |
This article pioneers analysis of children’s experiences of Online Child Sexual Grooming (OCSG) as relayed to counsellors at a child helpline in Spain. The data comprises the transcribed record of all the child-counsellor telephone conversations about OCSG made to Fundación ANAR’s child helpline service between 2013-2019 2019 in Spain (81 conversations, 34,102 words). The analysis uses a discourse-based model of OCSG (Lorenzo-Dus et al. 2020; Lorenzo-Dus 2023), centring on children’s interpretation of offenders’ manipulative tactics of entrapment as well as children’s communicative behaviour during the OCSG process. Our analysis shows that children’s discourse about OCSG generated within the counselling context focuses on the groomers’ tactics of sexual gratification (26%) and deceptive trust development (32%), and the children’s behaviour of trust development (43%) and further contact (28%). These findings suggest that, when relaying their experience of OCSG to a counsellor, many children feel they are/were in a relationship, including a romantic relationship. The findings also reveal some of the complex relational work that groomers perform during OCSG and its impact on the children they prey on. Children’s accounts of perceived sextortion are articulated around groomers’ impoliteness strategies of causing fear and invasion of their digital privacy (Culpeper 1996; Mullineux-Morgan and Lorenzo-Dus 2021). This study contributes to a better understanding of the child’s communicative processes of entrapment through mainstreaming their own voice, which is novel in studies on OCSG in general and, in the case of Spanish data in particular. Importantly, and from an applied research perspective, our findings may be used to inform the ongoing development of targeted interventions against OCSG for professionals in child-safeguarding roles, such as police officers, social workers, and educators. |
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| Keywords: |
discursive strategies; politeness; impoliteness; sexual cyberbullying; minors; speech; telephone; helpness; Spain |
| College: |
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Funders: |
AICO/2020/166/ “Ciberacoso sexual a menores (Grooming): de la
detección de patrones lingüísticos de acosadores y
víctimas a la elaboración de materiales de prevención”
I+D+i/PID2020-117964RB-I00, financiado por
MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 “Ciberacoso sexual
a menores: perfiles lingüísticos para el desarrollo
de herramientas digitales forenses para prevención,
detección y priorización en España”. |
| Issue: |
41 |
| Start Page: |
5 |
| End Page: |
20 |