Linguistic Analysis of Get Rich Quick Pitches
The two authors are professors at Communication Arts and Science Program at Calvin College, who mission is:
The CAS Department seeks to understand, engage, and renew human communication from a Reformed Christian perspective.
Although the book they were reviewing is over 30 years old, and the review over 15 years old, copycats infect the net. There is a similar looking book being pitched at amazon.com. Most amusingly, some fellow sponsored a link of this book to this site. The authors might have been analyzing the techinques being used at the website. Read their review and then visit the website.
But the article is also important because it highlights exactly what is wrong with how public regulators deal with business opportunties fraud.
Compare the detailed analysis of why, when and how the letter persuades with the FTC checklist on business opportunities scams. While the FTC checklist correctly identifies the elements in a biz op fraud, it is clear that they have no idea about what makes a biz op fatally attractive. Nor do they appear to review the biz op material to identify in a systemic manner what was it about the misrepresentations that individuals were attracted to. Why did the particular material work?
Nobody with the presence of mind to even consider a checklist is going to feel the sway or allure of a typical biz op pitch - so telling the public to use a checklist cannot possibly succeed. However, it does make the regulators feel good that they are "educating" the public and so it cannot be the regulators responsibilty that these faulty marketing materials appear with great regularity in the public domain. Imagine the outcry if the FDA or Health Canada confined itself to simply warning the public about untested drugs instead of actively trying to remove them from the marketplace!
