Language of Pick-Up Artists

Daria Dayter is Assistant Professor for English Language and Linguistics at Tampere University, Finland. Her research interests include digital language, discursive identity, simultaneous interpreting, and pragmatics and discourse analysis more generally. She has published widely on these topics, including the monograph Discursive Self in Microblogging (2016).Sofia Rüdiger is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Bayreuth with a research focus on digital communication, World Englishes, language and food, and pragmatics. She is editor of Corpus Approaches to Social Media (with Daria Dayter, 2020) and Talking about Food (with Susanne Mühleisen, 2020).

"A timely and transparent discourse analysis of the speed seduction industry. Zooming in on the digital discourse of pick-up artists, the authors unpack the words, actions and ideas of this peculiar digital tribe. Required reading for anyone with an interest in gender, digital media, and online harassment."- Tom Van Hout, Tilburg University, The Netherlands"The Language of Pick-Up Artists uncovers the world of self-styled pick-up artists, seduction gurus and "lifestyle coaches". Approaching the phenomenon from different linguistic angles, Dayter’s and Rüdiger’s book throws light on the vocabulary and norms of interaction in this community. The authors provide disturbing evidence of how pick-up artists use language when they seek to victimise women for personal and commercial gain. This is an important book that exposes the techniques and worldview of a group that is increasingly finding its way into the mainstream of gender relations."- Veronika Koller, Lancaster University, United Kingdom"Dayter and Rüdiger’s approach to understanding the linguistic practices by Pick-Up-Artists is nuanced and empirical. Through their careful positioning of the topic and their corpus linguistic and discourse analytic work with diverse sets of data, they can demonstrate how linguistic strategies are presented as mere play in an attempt to sell confidence-building and dating advice while in fact being dangerous and manipulative."- Miriam Locher, University of Basel, Switzerland

• Acknowledgments1 Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Pick-up artists: Who are they?1.3 Why study pick-up artists?1.4 Can words seduce?1.5 Which tools to use?1.5.1 Corpus compilation1.5.2 Corpus annotation1.5.3 Corpus analysis1.6 Why discourse analysis?1.7 Overview of the book1.7.1 Chapter 2: Pick-up artists and the seduction industry1.7.2 Chapter 3: Lexical aspects of pick-up artist discourse1.7.3 Chapter 4: The pragmatics of pick-up artist interactions1.7.4 Chapter 5: Conversations in the field1.7.5 Chapter 6: Teaching and selling seduction1.7.6 Chapter 7: Conclusion1.7.7 Chapter 8: The PUA glossary2 Pick-up artists and the seduction industry2.1 Introduction2.2 Rise and fall of the pick-up artist2.2.1 PUAs and negative publicity2.2.2 PUAs in the press2.3 Speed seduction: Industry or community?2.3.1 The seduction industry2.3.2 Seduction community2.4 PUA genres2.4.1 Dimensions of genre variation in the PUA community2.4.2 Offline genres: In-fields2.4.3 Offline genres: Guru lectures2.4.4 Online genres: Guru how-to videos2.4.5 Online genres: Social media2.4.6 Online genres: Field reports on forums2.4.7 Online genres: Websites and newsletters2.5 Conclusion3 Lexical aspects of pick-up artist discourse3.1 Introduction3.2 Data and methodology3.2.1 The Field Reports + Replies Corpus3.2.2 The e-PUA Corpus3.2.3 Semantic tagging3.3 Making it look like science: Pseudo-scientific vocabulary3.4 Lexical markers of pick-up belonging: Keyword analysis3.5 Where does it come from: Pick-up word-formation3.5.1 Semantic Shift3.5.2 Compounding and zero derivation3.5.3 Acronyms and abbreviations3.6 The numbers’ game: Quantification in pick-up discourse3.7 Hashtags for friends: Technological affordances for affiliation3.8 Conclusion4 The pragmatics of pick-up artist interactions4.1 Introduction4.2 Field reports as a PUA genre: A refresher4.3 Invoking expectations through frames4.4 Never a fail, always a success4.4.1 The schema: PUA field report4.4.2 The frame: Success or failure4.5 Confidence building through self-praise4.5.1 The self-praise iceberg4.5.2 Types of self-praise in field reports4.6 Conclusion5 Conversations in the field 5.1 Introduction5.2 What are in-fields?5.3 Power imbalance in seduction encounters5.3.1 A quantitative approach to analysing power in talk5.3.2 Power in talk: Topic control5.3.3 Modal verbs5.4 Macro-analysis of pick-up artists’ seduction techniques5.4.1 Pick-up models5.4.2 Understanding in-fields with the help of conversation analysis5.4.3 The Daygame Blueprint and preference organisation5.4.4 Discursive moves in the Capture Phase: Model vs. reality5.5 Conclusion6 Teaching and selling seduction6.1 Introduction6.2 Data and methodology6.2.1 The PUA-Lecture Corpus6.2.2 The PUA-How-To Corpus6.3 The instructional nature of the videos6.4 Becoming and being a PUA guru6.4.1 Creating an expert identity6.4.2 Information-related strategies6.4.3 Experience-related strategies6.4.4 Identity-related strategies6.4.5 Interaction-related strategies6.4.6 Expert identity strategies in PUA-How-To6.5 Comparing PUA-Lecture and PUA-How-To: Guru evolution6.6 Conclusion7 Conclusion7.1 Pick-up artists: A language-based view7.1.1 Language is a part of the shared repertoire and a constitutive element of the PUA community7.1.2 The persuasive intent of PUA discourse is aimed at other PUAs7.1.3 Prioritising engagement over liking7.1.4 Representation does not match reality7.2 Seduction as persuasive talk7.3 Is it just words?7.4 Concluding remarksAppendix A: Transcription conventionsAppendix B: Lists of videos included in PUA-Lecture and PUA-How-ToGlossary of pick-up artist termsReferencesIndex