Discourses of desire: the normative in online sex talk

PhD 2011 QMThis thesis, grounded in feminist sociology and queer theory, examines sex, sexuality, and desire in naturally occurring synchronous conversations within a non-sexually themed online community. Although the community is rooted in computing culture (i.e., a multi-user domain) and is not sexual in scope or purpose, sex talk is prevalent and persistent in the corpus. Seventy-five conversational logs, each covering 24 hours of conversations, are analysed using qualitative sociolinguistic discourse analysis. The findings demonstrate that the participants engage in sexual conversations (e.g., automated sexual commands, joking, self-disclosure, cybersex) that make use of the spatial and technical resources available to them, and that there are clear boundaries in the language used for sexual conversations. Sexual conversations are found across virtual spaces in this community and are based on in-group talk, often to create social belonging and shared meaning between speakers. While participants sometimes challenge existing social discourses of sexuality when adopting group-specific norms and narrative styles, they often enact them, particularly in regards to heteronormative heterosexuality and gender. This thesis proposes that sex and sexuality can be seen in relation to the social comprehensive, which includes individual agency, social infrastructure, everyday experience, discourses, and shared meaning. The framework underscores the relevance of sex and its relationship to the larger social world in spontaneous and everyday conversations about sex and desire from an online community. It contributes to our limited scholarly knowledge of how people discuss sex, allowing for the examination of the discourses that emerge in and through speakers’ words, the stories that they tell, how they are told, and to whom.ORSAS scholarship Scholarships from both EECS and the School of Languages, Linguistics and Fil

Fragile masculinity:social inequalities in the narrative frame and discursive construction of a mass shooter’s autobiography/manifesto

'Fragile masculinity' is an article that was originally published in the Academy of Social Science journal Contemporary Social Science (2016) now reprinted in an edited collection, Crime and Society

The co-construction of cybersex narratives

This article discusses the linguistic practice of cybersex and how it is discursively constructed. The analysis is based on naturally occurring, private cybersex conversations from an online community that is not sexual in scope or purpose. It is argued that cybersex participants co-construct narratives that differ from both standard dialogic and polyphonic narratives. Additionally, participants shift between first-, second- and third-person reference forms. It is reasoned that the distinct narrative and style shifts serve as communicative functions in co-constructing a cybersex scene. Although participants rely on mutual engagement and linguistic reciprocity, there are notable gender differences in who constructs the narrative’s ‘complicating action’ and who supports it through linguistic attentiveness (e.g. backchannelling) and responsiveness (e.g. mirroring). Ultimately, it is argued that although cybersex narratives are co-constructed, they are also reflections and reifications of heteronormative ideologies of sex and gender, particularly with respect to sexual agency.</jats:p

Review: Discourse Analysis; Sociolinguistics: Bednarek &amp; Caple (2012)

Summary and evaluation of News Discourse (2012), a book written by Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple, published by Bloomsbury as part of the series 'Bloomsbury Discourse' edited by Ken Hyland. Appeared in The Linguist List 10 April 2014, issue edited by Monica Macaulay

Empathy and medical error research

This paper discusses empathy when researching errors with interactive medical devices. Medical professionals who have made errors when using these devices can be seen as ‘second victims’ who are working within a culture that is quick to assign blame. We suggest a number of strategies for employing empathy when researching medical error, devices, and their design within the HCI context

Teaching HCI through magic

We discuss our use of magic to enthuse students about HCI and teach core concepts. We describe the format we trialed with student groups with a wide range of background from whole year groups to groups of gifted students. We conducted post-event surveys with students for two events and obtained teacher feedback from five others. We discuss the results of that data, showing that magic can be effective method for teaching HCI. The same tricks have since been used as part of an Interactive Systems Design MSc course

A study in engaging female students in computer science using role models

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

Teachers' perceptions of the value of research-based school lectures

A major challenge facing secondary schools is to encourage students to take computing courses. One approach is to invite external speakers from universities or industry to give lectures. The cs4fn project, a large UK-based initiative to enthuse students about computer science, includes this approach. Speakers from Queen Mary, University of London, visit schools to talk to students about computer science research. Our interactive talks tell engaging research-based stories on topics such as artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction as well as using magic tricks to illustrate computing principles. We asked teachers to complete post-talk surveys online; in particular we were interested in whether they believed students’ perceptions of the subject had changed. They reported that their students’ views of computer science were improved, and that they felt students were more likely to take classes in computing in the future as a result of the talk