Mass shootings, where four or more people are injured or killed, are widely constructed as a contemporary American social problem. This article uses critical discourse analysis guided by thematic analysis to examine the text written and distributed by a mass shooter in California in 2014. Analysis of the narrative frame and discursive construction shows that the author is motivated by a precarious or 'fragile' relationship to masculinity that involves positioning himself against both women and other minority ethnic men in a way that underscores multiple social inequalities. This work contributes to the social science of narrative by building on the connections between positioning theory and framing, which are applied to a text that contributes to debates in feminist linguistics and broader discussions of mass shootings. The findings contribute to feminist linguistics by demonstrating how a mass shooter uses language to rationalise his actions through a frame of hegemonic masculinity based on social inequalities, namely gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and social class. Finally, this work contributes to broader discussions of mass shooters by demonstrating how this mass shooter does not construct or position himself in a way that is exceptional or extraordinary but rather hinges on a fragile form of contemporary masculinity that uses violence as a way to prove self-worth, dominance, and superiority.

It is widely agreed that there is a need to excite more school students about computing. Considering teachers' views about student engagement is important to securing their support for any solution. We therefore present the results of a qualitative, questionnaire-based study on teachers' perceptions of the best ways to make the subject interesting. From 115 responses by UK computing teachers emerged a range of themes about the issues they felt were most important. We found that whilst their views reflected a range of approaches that are widely promoted in the literature and in national initiatives, there were also disconnects between teachers' views and wider discourses. Based on the results, we give specific recommendations for areas where more should be done to support teachers in making computing interesting to school students. Academics should do more to engage with teachers, especially if they wish to introduce deep computing principles in schools. Teachers expressed an interest in computing clubs in schools, but a strong support network for them is still needed. This may be an opportunity for businesses and universities to help support teachers.

An effective approach to engaging young women to take computing in higher education is to provide examples of successful female computer scientists. Can a print publication that combines core computing concepts with inspiring stories of women in the field be effective? In this paper, we describe a campaign that distributed a 60-page booklet on women in computing to UK secondary schools. We analyse the initial response from teachers, and draw some general conclusions from the project. Teachers expressed strong enthusiasm for the booklet, and also report the desire for recruitment and retention of girls in their computing programmes. They had confidence in the potential for this booklet to inspire young women to take computing.

Mass shootings, where four or more people are injured or killed, are widely constructed as a contemporary American social problem. This article uses critical discourse analysis guided by thematic analysis to examine the text written and distributed by a mass shooter in California in 2014. Analysis of the narrative frame and discursive construction shows that the author is motivated by a precarious or 'fragile' relationship to masculinity that involves positioning himself against both women and other minority ethnic men in a way that underscores multiple social inequalities. This work contributes to the social science of narrative by building on the connections between positioning theory and framing, which are applied to a text that contributes to debates in feminist linguistics and broader discussions of mass shootings. The findings contribute to feminist linguistics by demonstrating how a mass shooter uses language to rationalise his actions through a frame of hegemonic masculinity based on social inequalities, namely gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and social class. Finally, this work contributes to broader discussions of mass shooters by demonstrating how this mass shooter does not construct or position himself in a way that is exceptional or extraordinary but rather hinges on a fragile form of contemporary masculinity that uses violence as a way to prove self-worth, dominance, and superiority.

Clinical incident reporting provides opportunities for organisational learning, ideally leading to improved patient safety. However, this process requires healthcare professionals to record experiences where patients were harmed, or had the potential to be harmed. It also requires others to interpret the language used in order to make recommendations. We investigate the use of epistemic and evidential markers in incidents labelled as ‘user error’, in which a responsible individual is categorically implied, as opposed to other types of incidents where responsible individuals may not be tacitly assumed, such as ‘failure of sterilisation or contamination of equipment’ and ‘lack of suitably trained staff’. By analysing the frequency of various linguistic features related to authority and accountability, we provide insights into the pragmatics of clinical incident reporting. We find that user error reports differ from other categories of reports in that the identity of the narrator is obscured and the locus of agency is removed, and that this difference is irrespective to levels of patient harm. User error reports differ from other incident reports in the following statistically significant ways: they are more likely to be written using impersonal absent narration and feature significantly higher frequencies of epistemic markers of uncertainty and evidentiality