Rhetorical Strategies in Indra Kenz’s Binomo Promotion: A Forensic Linguistic Analysis

Abstract

The rapid expansion of social media has transformed digital platforms into influential spaces for promoting financial products and shaping investment decisions through persuasive communication. This development raises a linguistic problem in digital investment fraud, as persuasive messages can construct credibility, influence audience perceptions, and encourage financial decisions through rhetorical and pragmatic strategies that may obscure deceptive meanings. Drawing on Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos (2007), Searle’s Speech Act Theory (1969), Grice’s Conversational Implicature Theory (1975), and forensic linguistic principles, this study aims to analyze the rhetorical and pragmatic strategies employed in Indra Kenz’s Binomo promotional discourse and explain their significance as linguistic evidence. The study provides insights into linguistic indicators of deceptive financial promotion that may support forensic analysis, fraud prevention, and media literacy. A qualitative descriptive approach was employed using ten publicly accessible promotional videos selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected through documentation, transcription, and note-taking and analyzed using Miles et al.’s interactive model (2014). The findings reveal that ethos constructs credibility and authority, pathos creates emotional engagement and aspiration, and logos presents investment claims as rational and reasonable. These strategies operate with assertive, directive, and commissive speech acts and conversational implicatures to establish trust and encourage participation in high-risk investment activities. Collectively, these rhetorical and pragmatic patterns constitute language-based evidence for identifying and interpreting deceptive communication in digital financial fraud.