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[email protected]) Rhetorical moves and identity performance in online child sexual abuse interactions Volume One Emily Alice Chiang Doctor of Philosophy Centre for Forensic Linguistics Aston University September, 2018 © Emily Alice Chiang, 2018, asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this thesis. This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright belongs to its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without appropriate permission or acknowledgement. !1 Centre for Forensic Linguistics Aston University Rhetorical moves and identity performance in online child sexual abuse interactions Emily Chiang Doctor of Philosophy 2018 Thesis Summary Online child sexual abuse (OCSA) is a pervasive problem facilitated by the anonymity afforded to offenders online. From a largely social constructionist perspective, this thesis explores linguistic expressions of identity by participants across a range of OCSA interactions, including offenders and suspected offenders, victims, and undercover police officers. The thesis is structured around three individual studies, each involving a different abusive interaction type. Each study employs Swales’ (1981; 1990) move analysis framework, exploring how participants use rhetorical moves as a resource for identity performance.