Eva M. Mestre-Mestre
Protecting minors from potential harm, including sexual cyber-harassment, is a paramount social concern. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses, this study examines linguistic patterns associated with grooming discourse using a corpus-pragmatic approach. Based on a corpus of ten online conversations from the Perverted Justice archive, the study focuses on agency, explicit language, and emotional expression. Although the dataset includes interactions involving decoy victims and does not fully represent authentic child–offender exchanges, it provides a resource for exploring recurrent discourse patterns in suspected grooming contexts. While some research has focused on patterns associated with persuasion strategies (Lorenzo-Dus, 2022; MacLeod & Grant, 2021) or conversational moves (Chiang & Grant, 2017; Gupta et al., 2012), our research is consistent with studies focusing on online contexts (Kinzel, 2021; Lorenzo-Dus et al., 2016), suggesting that explicit language, emotion expression, and direct address play a significant role in the interactional dynamics. Findings are interpreted as exploratory and corpus-specific.