The team behind the DRAGON-Shield Training and the DRAGON-Spotter Tool (please visit our website to find out more) have this week published Online Child Sexual Grooming Discourse (cambridge.org) within the ‘Cambridge Element’ series.

The book provides a short and accessible introduction to the linguistics research behind the training.  It explores technology-assisted grooming of children for sex – often known as online grooming – as an illegal practice of communicative manipulation which means that forensic linguistics is ideally placed to tackle it.

The analysis draws on chatlog data from a range of sources including via law enforcement. Three features of online grooming language are focussed on: groomers’ use of manipulation tactics; groomers’ abuse of power asymmetries; and children’s communication during online grooming. The book is free to download until 29^th September 2023.