A discursive pragmatic study of emotional blackmail in American movies

Nawal Abbas; Afrah Suhail Najem; Hooi   Chee Mei

doi:10.5817/DI2025-2-4

A discursive pragmatic study of emotional blackmail in American movies

Vol.18,No.2(2025)
Discourse and Interaction

Nawal Abbas Afrah Suhail Najem Hooi Chee Mei

https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2025-2-4

pdf

Abstract

This study examines emotional blackmail from a discursive pragmatic standpoint to gain insights into how this psychologically manipulative phenomenon is revealed in the discourse of some American movies. Five extracts from five American movies are purposely selected and analyzed using an eclectic model based on a discursive pragmatic approach to navigate this unexplored study area. The model incorporates Halliday’s (2014) transitivity system, Martin and White’s (2005) attitude system, Forward and Frazier’s (1997) types and tools of emotional blackmail, and Mayfield’s (2010) informal fallacies. The present study is guided by four research questions that identify the types and tools of emotional blackmail employed in the selected data, investigate the informal fallacious appeals emotional blackmailers employ to perform emotional blackmail, analyse how emotional blackmailers use the transitivity system to influence their victims and explore how emotional blackmailers use the attitude categories to influence their victims. The analysis revealed the appearance of only the sufferer and punisher emotional blackmailers in the data, with the most common type of emotional blackmailers being the ones utilizing the guilt tool. This is because emotional blackmailers reveal their pain to their victims in an attempt to incite guilt in order to obtain what they desire. Besides, blackmailers adopted all types of informal fallacies in the selected data. Only mental, material, and relational processes were used. Finally, the extracts showed negative and positive attitudes ranging from blackmailers to victims for gaining control.

Keywords:
appraisal system; discursive pragmatics; emotional blackmail; informal fallacy; transitivity system

Author biographies

Nawal Abbas

University of Baghdad

Nawal Fadhil Abbas received her PhD in English Language and Linguistics in 2014 from the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Now she is a professor at the College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad. Her fields of study are semantics, pragmatics, and other fields such as critical discourse analysis, critical stylistics, and corpus linguistics.

Afrah Suhail Najem

University of Baghdad

Afrah S. Najem received an MA in English Language from the College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq in 2025. Her fields of interest include pragmatics and discourse analysis.

Hooi Chee Mei

Faculty of Creative Industries, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman

Hooi Chee Mei received her PhD in English Language in 2021 from the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra, Malaysia. She is an assistant professor at Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman. Her areas of interest are applied linguistics, pragmatics, English language, teaching methodology, and English for Specific Purposes (ESP).

References

Abbas, F. A., Qasim, T. A., & Jasim, H. A. (2023). Request constructions in classical Arabic versus modern Arabic: A corpus-based study. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 10(5), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/1598
Al-Asfer, A., & Bairmani, A. (2021). The pragmatics of cyber blackmail in emails [Unpublished master’s thesis]. University of Karbala.
Al-Hindawi, F. H., & Saffah, M. D. (2017). Pragmatics and discourse analysis. Journal of Education and Practice, 8(19), 93–103. http://www.iiste.org/Journals/index.php/JEP/article/view/37885/38967
Al-Kreimeen, R. A., Alghafary, N. A., & Samawi, F. S. (2022). The association of emotional blackmail and adjustment to college life among warned female students at Al-Balqa University students. Health Psychology Research, 10(2), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.52965/001c.34109
Barron, A., & Schneider, K. (2014). Discourse pragmatics: Signposting a vast field. In K. Schneider & A. Barron (Eds.), Pragmatics of discourse (pp. 1–34). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110214406-002
Bloor, T., & Bloor, M. (1995). The functional analysis of English: A Hallidayan approach. Arnold.
Bogdan, R., & Biklen, S. K. (1982). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods. Allyn and Bacon.
Coulthard, M. (1985). An introduction to discourse analysis. Longman.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Introduction: Entering the field of qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 1–17). Sage.
Dowden, B. H. (2020). Logical reasoning. Bradley H. Dowden.
Forward, S., & Frazier, D. (1997). Emotional blackmail. Harper.
Gerot, L., & Wignell, P. (1994). Making sense of functional grammar. Gerd Stabler.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2^nd ed.). Edward Arnold.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (4th ed.). Routledge.
Hancock, C. (2005). Meaning-centered grammar: An introductory text. Equinox.
Hatem, M. M., & Jameel, A. F. (2023). Review study in discourse analysis and appraisal theory in selected prison letters by Antonio Gramsci and other scholars. Al-Ustath Journal for Social and Human Sciences, 26(6), 111–125. https://crossworks.holycross.edu/mellon_summer_research/5
Igaab, Z. K. (2021). The pragmatics of blackmail in English and Iraqi-Arabic. International Linguistics Research, 4(3), 72–88. https://doi.org/10.30560/ilr.v4n3p72
Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause. Continuum.
Martin, J. R., & White, P. (2005). The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. Palgrave Macmillan.
Mayfield, M. (2010). Thinking for yourself: Developing critical thinking skills through reading and writing (8^th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Moeschler, J., & Reboul, A. (2009). Pragmatique du discours: Dix ans après. Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Philologia, 54(4), 5–28. https://access.archiveouverte.unige.ch/access/metadata/2b442204-af8c-42f9-a923-067212034e52/download
Mohammed, H. N., & Abbas, N. F. (2016). Impoliteness in literary discourse: A pragmatic study. International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, 5(2), 76–82.
Mohammed, M. M., & Kadum, S. A. (n.d.). A discoursal analysis of gender differences in selected English TV interviews. Journal of the College of Languages, 34, 1–14. https://www.iasj.net/iasj/pdf/44eb9d8b8a75aa59
Muhammad, M. J. (2021). A pragma-linguistic study of suggestive ambiguity in selected political texts. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 17(4), 2154–2165. https://doi.org/10.52462/jlls.156
Mu-Tzu, C. (2017). Emotional blackmail. Aquarius.
Neuman, W. L. (2014). Social research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Pearson.
Puig, M. B. (2003). Pragmatics and discourse analysis. http://www.gencat.cat/llengua/noves
Qassim, T. A., Abbas, N. F., & Mei, H. (2023). Refusal and politeness strategies favoured among Iraqi and Malaysian learners in marriage proposals. Discourse and Interaction, 16(2), 29–50. https://doi.org/10.5817/DI2023-2-29
Ramasamy, S. (2011). Informal reasoning fallacy and critical thinking dispositions: A univariate study of demographic characteristics among Malaysian undergraduates. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED526239.pdf
Rashid, B. N. (2021). Chomsky’s political views as a case study in a critical discourse analysis of ideology in the Iraqi wars. Review of International Geographical Education Online, 11(5), 3353–3364. https://doi.org/10.48047/rigeo.11.05.1190
Thompson, G. (2004). Introducing functional grammar (2nd ed.). Edward Arnold.
Vásquez, C., & Kreis, R. (2023). Pragmatics and discourse analysis. The encyclopedia of applied linguistics, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1463.pub2
Zhou, Z. C. (2018). The logical fallacies in political discourse [Unpublished master’s thesis]. College of the Holy Cross.
Zienkowski, J., Östman, J., & Verschueren, J. (Eds.), (2011). Discursive pragmatics. Benjamins.