Uncovering The Genre Of Threatening Texts A multilayered corpus study A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Linguistics By Mitchell J. Abrams, B.A. Washington, DC April 15, 2019 Copyright c 2019 by Mitchell J. Abrams All Rights Reserved ii Uncovering The Genre Of Threatening Texts A multilayered corpus study Mitchell J. Abrams, B.A. Thesis Advisor: Amir Zeldes Ph.D. Abstract Threatening communication has received research attention from the perspective of psychology and behavioral analysis for threat assessment purposes, and linguistics for pragmatics research and legal applications. While threats are dangerous in nature and prevalent in our society, little is known about the linguistic and discursive nature of threats as a genre, and there are few studies that have empirically tested the linguistic features of threats in general (Gales, 2010; Muschalik, 2018; Nini, 2017). Exploring written threats as an underrepresented genre can help us see patterns in how these types of texts are structured and the linguistic methods people employ to perform this social action. This knowledge is not only applicable to genre studies and linguistics, but also practically useful for law enforcement, threat assessment practitioners, and forensic linguists who deal with this text type regularly. This study uses analytical tools such as the Rhetorical Structure Theory frame- work (Mann and Thompson, 1988) to facilitate a rhetorical analysis of the genre, and uses rhetorical relations to serve as linguistic evidence for the structuring of the texts. The study also utilizes part of speech tags and dependency syntax to explore other linguistic features of threatening texts, and compare them to text types in GUM (Georgetown University Multilayer) corpus. Lastly, this study also contributes a new corpus, CCT (Corpus of Conditional Threats), to GUM for further linguistic research on threatening communication. iii This multilayered approach reveals the prototypical generic structure (GSP) of written conditional threats and the distribution of its salient lexico-grammatical fea- tures. Overall, this study argues for threatening text as its own genre, and explains the flexibility of the genre. Index words: Threatening messages, genre, corpus linguistics, multilayer corpora iv Dedication This thesis would not be possible without the incredible support of many people, and so this research is dedicated to them- To my advisor, Dr. Amir Zeldes, for your encouragement and feedback on my project, and helping me to see the beauty of corpus linguistics throughout my studies at Georgetown. To my professor, Dr. Natalie Schilling, for your encouragement and forensic linguistics class, which inspired me to pursue this research area To my parents, Gloria and Alex, and sister, Laura, for being interested in my research and supportive of my academic pursuits. To my colleagues in the linguistics department at Georgetown University, for your ideas and support To my colleagues in the computational linguistics concentration, Janet, Logan, and Luke, for inspiring me and helping me to grow as a student Thank you, Mitchell J. Abrams v Table of Contents Chapter 1Introduction................................. 1 2LiteratureReview.............................. 5 2.1 WhatisaThreat .......................... 5 2.2 ThreatTypes ............................ 7 2.3 Genre Studies . 15 2.4 CorpusLinguistics ......................... 25 3 Methodology ................................ 31 3.1 Data................................. 31 3.2 Syntax Annotation . 37 3.3 Discourse Annotations . 38 4Analysis................................... 43 4.1 Genre Analysis . 43 4.2 Rhetorical Structure . 51 4.3 Comparison to Genres in the Georgetown University Multilayer Corpus................................ 55 4.4 Lexico-Grammatical Features in the Corpus of Conditional Threats and the Georgetown University Multilayer Corpus . 64 5 Conclusion.................................. 71 References . 74 vi List of Figures 3.1 Screenshot of threatening text extracted from NexisUni. 33 3.2 Screenshot of spreadsheet in GitDox with annotation columns. 36 3.3 Visualization of dependency annotation in the Arborator interface. These sentences can be manually corrected by dragging edges and choosing a functional label from a list of options. 38 3.4 Screenshot of rstWeb interface and partial discourse structure of a threatening text. 40 4.1 Typical uses of condition relation in threats. 53 4.2 Use of the circumstance relation in the Background Information (BI) stage and Demanded Action (DA) stage. 54 4.3 Proportional distribution of relations in the Georgetown University Multilayer corpus and the Corpus of Conditional Threats. 57 4.4 Example of motivation RST relation in a how-to text from the George- town University Multilayer corpus. 59 4.5 Example of motivation RST relation in the Corpus of Conditional Threats. .................................. 60 4.6 Proportional distribution of relations in the Georgetown University Multilayer corpus and the Corpus of Conditional Threats. 61 4.7 Example of background RST relation in a Bio text from the George- town University Multilayer corpus. 62 vii 4.8 Example of background RST relation in a the Corpus of Conditional Threats. .................................. 63 4.9 RST tree with second person pronoun in a text from the Corpus of ConditionalThreats. ........................... 66 4.10 Proportional distribution of Stanford dependency relations in the Georgetown University Multilayer corpus and the Corpus of Condi- tionalThreats. .............................. 67 4.11 Example of vocative dependency function in the Corpus of Conditional Threats. .................................. 68 4.12 "if" clause construction in the Corpus of Conditional Threats. 68 4.13 Example of nsubj dependency function in the Corpus of Conditional Threats. .................................. 69 4.14 Example of nsubjpass dependency function in the Corpus of Condi- tionalThreats. .............................. 69 viii List of Tables 3.1 Inventory of rhetorical relations in the Corpus of Conditional Threats (CCT).................................... 40 4.1 Generic Structural Potential (GSP) of written conditional threats. 50 4.2 List of Rhetorical Relations in the Corpus of Conditional Threats (CCT). 52 4.3 List of rhetorical relations that coincided with generic stages in the Corpus of Conditional Threats (CCT). 55 4.4 Proportions of Texts in the Georgetown University Multilayer corpus andtheCorpusofConditionalThreats.. 56 4.5 Proportions of Texts in the Georgetown University Multilayer corpus andtheCorpusofConditionalThreats.. 56 4.6 Frequencies of pronoun usage in the Georgetown University Multilayer corpus and the Corpus of Conditional Threats. 65 ix Chapter 1 Introduction Listen MARCIANO: Another reminder-either let EZ CHARLES beat you in that June XXX fight or your wife and child get bumped off.We’reveryfamiliarwiththecityofBrocktonandthe entire surrounding area. If you think that it is worth the lives of your loved ones to win an old boxing watch, go ahead. If you do you’ll regret it for the rest of your life. You’re guaranteed a return in 90 days, ain’t you? Why be so foolish as to ignore this threat on your loved ones’ lives. Play ball with us; you can take care of CHARLES in the return match. Desperate Duo From FBI vault (Rocky Marciano, File 1) This authentic threat was sent to the famous boxer, Rocky Marciano, in an effort to convince the fighter to lose a fight, or face negative consequences for his family. This is not a letter than anyone would want to receive, but it reminds us of the severity of threats and their potentially negative impact on society, as threats have the potential to instill fear in those involved and manipulate participants. This also makes threatening communication an important area of study. We might not realize that threats are prevalent in our lives, from a parent threatening punishment on their children if they do not behave to a teacher threatening a student with detention. But 1 threats like these are innocuous and considered legal threats. Illegal threats, however, are dangerous and can have serious implications. For this reason, threats have been studied mainly for the purposes of threat assessment (Cornell, 2010; Meloy et al., 2008; Turner and Gelles, 2012), as individuals and institutions must assess the severity of athreattobecarriedout,potentiallyleadingtodestructivebehavior. Anotablehighprofilecasestudyinvolvingathreateningcommunicationwasthe Unabomber airliner threat in June of 1995. Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber (UNiversity and Airline BOMBER), threatened to blow up an airline departing Los Angeles. The threat was taken seriously and lead to increased security measures in anticipation of a violent attack that was never realized. Another high profile, however, did not have the same outcome. In the Lindbergh kidnapping case in 1932, Charles Lindbergh’s 20 month year old son was abducted from his home. The kidnapper left a threatening ransom note demanding $50,000 and indicated that they had his son, implying that his son was in danger if the demands were not met. The case caught national attention and brought distress to the Lindbergh family as well as an exhaustive search effort for the missing child. While the perpetrator, Bruno Hauptmann, was eventually convicted of the crime, the Lindbergh baby was found