No Cover Image

Journal article 340 views 127 downloads

“Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions

Nuria Lorenzo-Dus Orcid Logo, Craig Evans

Journal of Pragmatics, Volume: 249, Pages: 44 - 56

Swansea University Author: Nuria Lorenzo-Dus Orcid Logo

  • 70399.VoR.pdf

    PDF | Version of Record

    ©2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

    Download (972.6KB)

Check full text

DOI (Published version): 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.013

Abstract

In this paper, we examine children's resistance strategies during online grooming interactions, specifically the different ways they use facework to counter groomers' advances. The study identifies types of children's discursive resistance based on established politeness and impoliten...

Full description

Published in: Journal of Pragmatics
ISSN: 0378-2166 1879-1387
Published: Elsevier BV 2025
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa70399
first_indexed 2025-09-18T15:55:27Z
last_indexed 2025-10-24T18:37:07Z
id cronfa70399
recordtype SURis
fullrecord <?xml version="1.0"?><rfc1807><datestamp>2025-10-23T14:55:53.6939629</datestamp><bib-version>v2</bib-version><id>70399</id><entry>2025-09-18</entry><title>&#x201C;Not right now&#x201D;: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions</title><swanseaauthors><author><sid>fac9246a2aa3ba738f8b431e20e45a64</sid><ORCID>0000-0002-6211-7939</ORCID><firstname>Nuria</firstname><surname>Lorenzo-Dus</surname><name>Nuria Lorenzo-Dus</name><active>true</active><ethesisStudent>false</ethesisStudent></author></swanseaauthors><date>2025-09-18</date><deptcode>CACS</deptcode><abstract>In this paper, we examine children's resistance strategies during online grooming interactions, specifically the different ways they use facework to counter groomers' advances. The study identifies types of children's discursive resistance based on established politeness and impoliteness taxonomies (Brown and Levinson, 1987; and Culpeper, 2016; respectively), and quantifies the tendency for children to produce these based on evidence from a specialist corpus of 80 online grooming chatlogs, shared by UK law enforcement for research purposes. The study also examines how children perform resistance discursively as part of a dynamic interactional process. Our research finds that children produce resistance that is fairly evenly balanced between politeness and impoliteness-based types. The majority of politeness-based resistance is oriented to positive face needs, reflecting children's personal/romantic relationship goals, while children's negative politeness-based resistance is attributable to adult-child/manipulator-victim power imbalance in online grooming interactions. The majority of impoliteness-based resistance is also oriented to positive face needs, primarily acting against these through the strategy &#x2018;Ignore, snub&#x2019;, while children's negative impoliteness-based resistance tends to take the form of blocking. This is the first study to systematically identify resistance types and their discursive realization in a sizeable corpus of real online grooming chatlogs. Its findings help inform preventative technologies to counter the globally escalating problem of technology facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse.</abstract><type>Journal Article</type><journal>Journal of Pragmatics</journal><volume>249</volume><journalNumber/><paginationStart>44</paginationStart><paginationEnd>56</paginationEnd><publisher>Elsevier BV</publisher><placeOfPublication/><isbnPrint/><isbnElectronic/><issnPrint>0378-2166</issnPrint><issnElectronic>1879-1387</issnElectronic><keywords>Online grooming; Discourse; Children&amp;apos;s resistance; Pragmatics; Politeness; Impoliteness</keywords><publishedDay>1</publishedDay><publishedMonth>11</publishedMonth><publishedYear>2025</publishedYear><publishedDate>2025-11-01</publishedDate><doi>10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.013</doi><url/><notes/><college>COLLEGE NANME</college><department>Culture and Communications School</department><CollegeCode>COLLEGE CODE</CollegeCode><DepartmentCode>CACS</DepartmentCode><institution>Swansea University</institution><apcterm>SU Library paid the OA fee (TA Institutional Deal)</apcterm><funders>This work was supported by Safe Online, Tech Coalition &#x2013; Safe Online Research Fund, and the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovaci&#xF3;n y Universidades (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033).</funders><projectreference/><lastEdited>2025-10-23T14:55:53.6939629</lastEdited><Created>2025-09-18T16:51:03.5300418</Created><path><level id="1">Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences</level><level id="2">School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics</level></path><authors><author><firstname>Nuria</firstname><surname>Lorenzo-Dus</surname><orcid>0000-0002-6211-7939</orcid><order>1</order></author><author><firstname>Craig</firstname><surname>Evans</surname><order>2</order></author></authors><documents><document><filename>70399__35134__175ba486cfa94bab9877cc29a0ba353c.pdf</filename><originalFilename>70399.VoR.pdf</originalFilename><uploaded>2025-09-18T16:56:25.6567700</uploaded><type>Output</type><contentLength>995941</contentLength><contentType>application/pdf</contentType><version>Version of Record</version><cronfaStatus>true</cronfaStatus><documentNotes>&#xA9;2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.</documentNotes><copyrightCorrect>true</copyrightCorrect><language>eng</language><licence>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/</licence></document></documents><OutputDurs/></rfc1807>
spelling 2025-10-23T14:55:53.6939629 v2 70399 2025-09-18 “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions fac9246a2aa3ba738f8b431e20e45a64 0000-0002-6211-7939 Nuria Lorenzo-Dus Nuria Lorenzo-Dus true false 2025-09-18 CACS In this paper, we examine children's resistance strategies during online grooming interactions, specifically the different ways they use facework to counter groomers' advances. The study identifies types of children's discursive resistance based on established politeness and impoliteness taxonomies (Brown and Levinson, 1987; and Culpeper, 2016; respectively), and quantifies the tendency for children to produce these based on evidence from a specialist corpus of 80 online grooming chatlogs, shared by UK law enforcement for research purposes. The study also examines how children perform resistance discursively as part of a dynamic interactional process. Our research finds that children produce resistance that is fairly evenly balanced between politeness and impoliteness-based types. The majority of politeness-based resistance is oriented to positive face needs, reflecting children's personal/romantic relationship goals, while children's negative politeness-based resistance is attributable to adult-child/manipulator-victim power imbalance in online grooming interactions. The majority of impoliteness-based resistance is also oriented to positive face needs, primarily acting against these through the strategy ‘Ignore, snub’, while children's negative impoliteness-based resistance tends to take the form of blocking. This is the first study to systematically identify resistance types and their discursive realization in a sizeable corpus of real online grooming chatlogs. Its findings help inform preventative technologies to counter the globally escalating problem of technology facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse. Journal Article Journal of Pragmatics 249 44 56 Elsevier BV 0378-2166 1879-1387 Online grooming; Discourse; Children&apos;s resistance; Pragmatics; Politeness; Impoliteness 1 11 2025 2025-11-01 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.013 COLLEGE NANME Culture and Communications School COLLEGE CODE CACS Swansea University SU Library paid the OA fee (TA Institutional Deal) This work was supported by Safe Online, Tech Coalition – Safe Online Research Fund, and the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033). 2025-10-23T14:55:53.6939629 2025-09-18T16:51:03.5300418 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics Nuria Lorenzo-Dus 0000-0002-6211-7939 1 Craig Evans 2 70399__35134__175ba486cfa94bab9877cc29a0ba353c.pdf 70399.VoR.pdf 2025-09-18T16:56:25.6567700 Output 995941 application/pdf Version of Record true ©2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. true eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
title “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions
spellingShingle “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions
Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
title_short “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions
title_full “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions
title_fullStr “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions
title_full_unstemmed “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions
title_sort “Not right now”: Children's resistance during online grooming interactions
author_id_str_mv fac9246a2aa3ba738f8b431e20e45a64
author_id_fullname_str_mv fac9246a2aa3ba738f8b431e20e45a64_***_Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
author Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
author2 Nuria Lorenzo-Dus
Craig Evans
format Journal article
container_title Journal of Pragmatics
container_volume 249
container_start_page 44
publishDate 2025
institution Swansea University
issn 0378-2166
1879-1387
doi_str_mv 10.1016/j.pragma.2025.08.013
publisher Elsevier BV
college_str Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchytype
hierarchy_top_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_top_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
hierarchy_parent_id facultyofhumanitiesandsocialsciences
hierarchy_parent_title Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
department_str School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics
document_store_str 1
active_str 0
description In this paper, we examine children's resistance strategies during online grooming interactions, specifically the different ways they use facework to counter groomers' advances. The study identifies types of children's discursive resistance based on established politeness and impoliteness taxonomies (Brown and Levinson, 1987; and Culpeper, 2016; respectively), and quantifies the tendency for children to produce these based on evidence from a specialist corpus of 80 online grooming chatlogs, shared by UK law enforcement for research purposes. The study also examines how children perform resistance discursively as part of a dynamic interactional process. Our research finds that children produce resistance that is fairly evenly balanced between politeness and impoliteness-based types. The majority of politeness-based resistance is oriented to positive face needs, reflecting children's personal/romantic relationship goals, while children's negative politeness-based resistance is attributable to adult-child/manipulator-victim power imbalance in online grooming interactions. The majority of impoliteness-based resistance is also oriented to positive face needs, primarily acting against these through the strategy ‘Ignore, snub’, while children's negative impoliteness-based resistance tends to take the form of blocking. This is the first study to systematically identify resistance types and their discursive realization in a sizeable corpus of real online grooming chatlogs. Its findings help inform preventative technologies to counter the globally escalating problem of technology facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse.
published_date 2025-11-01T05:32:48Z
_version_ 1856896361664872448
score 11.096068

Similar Items