Linguistic Analysis of School Shooters' Leakage: examination of Dr. Langman's Typology

Emily C. Smedley

Advisor: Linda M. Merola, PhD, Department of Criminology, Law and Society

Committee Members: Charlotte Gill, Cynthia Lum, Jeffrey W. Pollard

Online Location, Online
July 03, 2023, 01:00 PM to 03:00 PM

Abstract:

School shootings merit researchers’ attention because of the inherent importance of school safety. Previous research on school shooters highlighted psychological and sociological factors, producing considerable knowledge concerning leakage and debunking the myth of an accurate school shooter profile. Little research exists on their linguistic factors, which reveal information about the individual’s psychological state, motivations, and thought process. Langman (2009a) categorized school shooters into three types: psychopathic, psychotic, and traumatized. This project extends existing research by examining school shooters from a different vantage point: the linguistic hallmarks present in their first-person communications. This exploratory study examined the following research question: do school shooters of differing psychological characteristics employ different linguistic factors in their communications? Manual and computerized content analyses were conducted to search for 11 categories of linguistic content within the writings of 15 school shooters. Results indicated that a variety of linguistic factors vary significantly within the communications of three differing types of school shooters as characterized within Dr. Langman’s typology. For example, psychotic and traumatized school shooters used more first-person pronouns than psychopathic school shooters. Psychotic school shooters also used more figures of speech than psychopathic school shooters. This research contributes to the field of threat assessment by expanding the scope of actionable information which can be used to inform practitioners’ threat assessments. Ultimately, this information may contribute to determining when there should be growing concern about an individual in the context of a larger threat assessment. Additionally, this project is the first to categorize school shooters based purely upon the linguistic characteristics within their communications. As such, this project provides a foundation for further linguistic examinations of school shooters’ communications and also augments Dr. Langman’s school shooter typology (2009a).