A discursive pragmatic study of emotional blackmail in American movies

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. © 2025 Masaryk University. All rights reserved.