This study investigates the organisation of topic in Japanese conversation. Using the framework of conversation analysis (CA), it aims to identify the mechanisms of the organisation of topic initiation, maintenance, and shift by investigating the environments where these actions occur and the devices participants use in order to achieve their actions at a particular place. Through the examination of questions and repair initiation, the organisation of topic initiation is shown as a boundaried topical movement in which the closing of one topic is followed by the initiation of another. It is crucially characterised as the recipient design, thereby, participants thoroughly attend to the co-participants’ events/experiences. The topic negotiation is illustrated through the examination of devices such as discourse marker dakara (‘so’) and figurative expressions pursuing the recipients’ response by means of the upshot and summary assessments. While orienting to the topic closing, participants monitor whether they can move to a next topic or they have something mentionable. The practice of reformulation and the reformulation questions reveal the organisation of topic shift which may enable the participants to manage or control the topical movement by organising their utterances through the initiation of repair. While keeping some connection with the prior or earlier turn(s), participants introduce a new topic. Participants effectively use repair initiation in implementing topic initiation/topic shift in order to develop the topical talk when they face troubles or fail to make their projections. Participants’ management elicits the co-participant’s coordination, which is an important social action. The study shows that the ways participants organise their conversation are overwhelmingly similar between Japanese and English, which indicates that conversational structures are in fact somehow primordial and they transcend linguistic and cultural differences.

This thesis aimed to examine the functional relationship between adolescent bullying victimisation and alcohol-misuse using two comorbidity models: a causal model and a common underlying mechanism model. This research had 4 main aims: 1) to investigate the risk conferred by adolescent bullying victimisation on alcohol-misuse, focusing on the role of coping-drinking motives; 2) to understand the risk conferred for victimisation from neurotic personality traits previously implicated in alcohol-misuse, whilst focusing on the role of emotional symptoms; 3) to compare the behavioural and neurological emotional vigilance of adolescents who have either experienced bullying victimisation or a severe trauma to non-victimised participants; 4) to investigate the effect over 18-months of personality-targeted coping-skills interventions on reducing victimisation, coping-drinking motives and alcohol-related problems in victims with high levels of neurotic personality traits. These objectives were addressed using data from three independent studies: The Preventure and Adventure studies which administered personality-targeted interventions for adolescents (aged 13-16 years) and the IMAGEN study. Evidence was provided for both comorbidity models. A causal comorbidity model was supported with results showing that bullying victimisation predicted future alcohol-misuse, a relationship mediated by coping-drinking motives. Two neurotic personality domains, which have been previously implicated in alcohol-misuse, predicted risk for victimisation, mediated by the development of emotional symptoms, therefore supporting a common mechanism model of comorbidity. Victims displayed a hypervigilance for fearful face stimuli, which was similar to trauma-exposed adolescents. A combined-victim group with a high level of emotional impact showed increased brain activation for angry and ambiguous faces. Within this group, emotional symptoms were positively associated with increased neural response to angry and ambiguous faces in areas including the anterior cingulate cortex. Finally, results suggest that personality-targeted interventions can reduce victimisation and increase positive coping strategies, in addition to reducing coping-drinking motives and alcohol-related problems specifically for victims of bullying.

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This study was initiated in order to understand how cross-cultural friendships are formed and managed by non-native and native Japanese university students in Tokyo. In order to examine the impact of culture upon the formation of friendships, case studies were employed. Data were collected using ethnographic tools, such as participant observation, informal interviews and unstructured interviews with five participants. Individuals were categorised into two groups: Case A - those who were satisfied with their friendships and Case B - those who were dissatisfied with their friendships. Each case was examined using the framework of acculturation (Berry 2006). Through analysing patterns existing amongst and between Cases A and B, I identified what makes it challenging for university students to form cross-cultural friendships. Case A participants seemed to maintain an equal power balance between 'my culture' and 'other cultures'. They gained new interactive competences appropriate for cross-cultural contexts, whilst maintaining their own core beliefs and values. Case B students, on the other hand, struggled to understand how to bridge a gap with others in cross-cultural contexts. They also found it challenging to fit into a 'group culture', which was demonstrated in this particular research field of the Japanese university. Throughout the interviews, a link between language and culture was also identified.

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The human face is one of the most significant stimuli we encounter, and carries a wealth of information regarding socially relevant traits. Previous research has begun to demonstrate that the face displays an array of cues or signals to social traits that others are able to detect. Moreover, the use of cosmetics by females can alter perceptions of social traits. In the current thesis, I demonstrate that both facial shape, skin texture, and viewing angle contribute to the accurate detection of personality traits and physical health from the static, neutral face. The right side of the face affords greater accuracy for personality traits than the left, while facial shape and texture contribute differently to different traits. Consistent with previous literature, we find that skin texture is all that is necessaty to accurately perceive health, and that this information is available from anywhere in the face. I further investigate the accurate detection of personality in female faces, and whether the everyday practice of cosmetics application has any effect on this accuracy. Results indicate that cosmetics do not affect perceptions of actual personality traits, but that perceptions are shifted towards the ideal personality of the wearer. Cosmetics have greater effects on perceptions of social traits, rather than accurate detection. I examined sex differences in perceptions of various social traits in faces of females with and without cosmetics, finding that males generally think females appear more socially desirable without cosmetics, while female observers demonstrate an opposite pattern. Expanding upon this, I also illustrate than females wear an excess of cosmetics for optimal perceptions of traits related to attractiveness. Furthermore, I show that perceptions of attractiveness with cosmetics are generally lower for males across all ages. Popular and conventional accounts suggest that cosmetics are used to attract mates, but the evidence presented here suggests they are failing. I provide the first evidence that the use of cosmetics may be miscalibrated towards a false ideal - females may be applying cosmetics for mistaken ideas regarding male preferences, when in fact, males prefer significantly lower amounts of cosmetics than a normal application results in. Surprisingly, we show that this mistaken belief also extends to males themselves, who feel other males are different to themselves. Typical cosmetics application enhances sex differences in facial contrasts. I further investigated sex differences in skin colouration across multiple samples, and demonstrate how an application of cosmetics acts upon these differences, as well as adding desirable colour properties to faces. Overall, the current thesis further expands the body of literature demonstrating that facial skin plays a role in social cognition, and demonstrates the various ways that cosmetics act upon this feature to alter such perceptions.

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Whilst there is some literature in the UK and internationally surrounding both peer groups and their activities during break-times and more generally group-work within the class-room, there is no research, as yet, that focuses specifically on the influence that peer groups' activity during break-times has on pedagogy. This is an under-explored and under-theorised area which suggests that there is little understanding in education of how social relationships outside the class-room influence learning within the class-room. Moreover, much of the available literature focusing on teaching and learning seems to have been underpinned by traditional models of learning. This research seeks to highlight the importance of friendships and its direct relationship with learning through the exploration and application of the socio-cultural theory (in particular through the work of Vygotsky and his zone of proximal development, Lave and Wenger's (1998) Communities of Practice literature and Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological approach). Here, learning is reconceptualised by moving the focus away from the individual in isolation and the personal, towards a focus on the social and active participation. This qualitative research Main Study was carried out within the autumn term in a secondary school in Wales. Taking part in the research were a total of forty-four female pupils (all within Key Stage 3) and eight teachers. The pupils participated in focus groups (which were all tape-recorded) and one friendship group from each year volunteered for participant observation which took place over two full days per group. The teachers were all interviewed individually using semi-structured interviews. The data from the field was all transcribed and analysed using the socio-cultural framework. A narrative was also written to help to provide a more holistic view of the data and to help situate the experience of friendships within the whole school day. One main over-riding theme emerged from the transcription, that of 'the secret world of friendship'. The theme revealed how much of peer group activity during break-times was opaque to many teachers and how pupils played out their powerlessness within the class-room in the face of oppression (due to the way that the education system is presently structured). Many secret notes were passed around and personal objects used as acts of resistance. The data showed that negotiating identities (by curtailing the tension between the personal and the social) and generally managing social relationships were a key element in a school pupil's life and important in their overall identity, but this area still remains predominantly secret to, or ignored by, many teachers. The socio-cultural approach highlights many of the tensions that are embedded within the present structure of the education system as it stands. By adopting this approach, or gaining an awareness of its key premises, the personal and the social become reunited and peer groups can become a positive and productive part of learning.