Abstract:

The purpose of the article was to investigate the literature on linguistic indicators of fraudulent texts, with a focus on company financial reports. The authors analysed 25 publications from 1995 to 2025 and identified standard features of fraudulent texts. The article fills a gap in the literature by summarising previous research and identifying common ground for fraud identification. The main findings of the articles as linguistic fraud identifiers included: avoidance of first-person singular pronouns, increased use of hedge words, negations, negative emotions, passive forms, lower readability, and fewer details. The research hypotheses that mental effort in lying produces recognisable effects in written language and that the rules differ across languages (English, Polish, Chinese) were confirmed.