This thesis examines language variation and change in a context of minority language revitalisation. In particular, I concentrate on young fluent speakers of Scottish Gaelic, a minority language of Scotland that is currently undergoing revitalisation. Data from three groups of speakers are presented: older speakers in the Isle of Lewis, a Gaelic heartland area in north-west Scotland; adolescent Gaelic-speakers in Lewis learning the language in immersion schooling; and adolescent Gaelic-speakers in immersion schooling in Glasgow, an urban centre where Gaelic has not traditionally been spoken as a widespread community language. The sociolinguistic analysis examines potential language changes, explores patterns of linguistic variation, and uncovers the role that Gaelic plays in identity formation for each of the participants. In order to gain an insight into the role of Gaelic in different speakers’ lives, I report on ethnographic studies carried out in Lewis and in Glasgow. The phonetic analysis then explores patterns of variation in the production of laterals, vowels, and tone and intonation. The results indicate large differences between the speech of older and adolescent speakers in Lewis, while differences between young speakers in Lewis and Glasgow suggest that Glasgow Gaelic is developing as a phonetically and socially distinct variety of the language. For example, older speakers in Lewis speak Gaelic as a partial tone language, unlike young people in Lewis and in Glasgow. Differences are also present between young people in Lewis and in Glasgow, such as in the acoustics of the vowel [ʉ], the production of the lateral system, and intonation patterns. The developments detailed in this thesis are the result of a complex interaction between the internal sound structure of Gaelic, language contact with varieties of English, identity construction, and differing conceptions of the self. All of these factors are conditioned by the status of Gaelic as a minority endangered and revitalised language. In exploring these avenues, I advance an account of language variation and change and apply it to a context of minority language revitalisation.

This thesis considers the ways in which the dominated, marked and suffering body (the controlled body) has been represented and employed in recent mainstream cinema. Noting a shift from narratives that depict escape and the alleviation of torment to ones that highlight subjection and endurance, it probes the influences and implications of the change. The project employs an interdisciplinary approach that utilizes discourses from anthropology, art history and cultural studies in conjunction with textual analysis, and consequently attempts to rethink a pleasure in pain outside psychoanalytically informed theories. The thesis argues that diverse images of pain can be usefully understood by examining them as part of a collective negotiation of the relationship we have with our bodies in Western culture, especially in respect of agency and corporeality. Identifying a fascination for activities that fuse concepts of pain and pleasure, in particular sadomasochism, body modification, artwork and extreme sports, the study argues that the controlled body borrows heavily from these sources for its imagery but typically understates the social motivations of masochistic pleasure and assertion of autonomy. The research uncovers a range of narrative strategies that justify depictions of masochism (especially in men) that deflect the implication of pleasurable pain whilst simultaneously formulating it as part of personal identity. It investigates how pain and the closeness to death are used to convey a vitality of existence, and also, through an analysis of the spectacle and the narrative patterns in recent films, offers an appreciation of how the spectator engages with the texts. Furthermore, the iconography of pain and control is shown to be important in our conceptualization of beauty, whilst the personal appropriation of suffering can be interpreted as an affirmative choice. The thesis therefore reveals that, with varying degrees of explicitness, mainstream cinema has broached contemporary anxieties regarding self determination and identity through the representation of the controlled body.

This thesis offers an analysis of how conceptions of responsibility have affected social responses to HIV/AIDS. The central premise of this work is that how responsibility for the disease is presumed has a determining impact upon policy and individual reactions to the epidemic. This in turn influence the spread of the disease. This thesis also addresses how AIDS and its associated meanings provides and necessitates new ways of understanding social relations of responsibility. I begin with a theoretical exploration of dominant perspectives on responsibility through the development of two analytical categories: responsibility as freedom and responsibility as control. The first of these represents those approaches to responsibility that regard it as the condition that makes individual freedom possible. The second views all notions of responsibility as an inherently restrictive means of individual self-disciplining which only serves to protect the status-quo. In the successive case studies on health promotion materials, I-IIV testing policy and the criminalisation of HIV transmission, I develop a detailed analysis of the embeddedness of individual responsibility as promoted by the responsibility as freedom model, and of the accompanying critiques of those individualised approaches that some from the responsibility as control model. I then explore and alternative form of apprehending responsibility that transcends this abrupt dichotomy between freedom and control. Using the example of the 1 3th International AIDS Conference at Durban, I elaborate an intersubjective model of responsibility. In this framework, I propose an understanding of responsibility founded on social relations and the interconnectedness of social actors. This position also acknowledges the political struggles inevitably involved in attempts to bring about change, struggles which involve individuals, civil society, organisations and states.

Overcoming actual violence is the driving, although hidden force behind modern modes of thought and investigation, the conceptualisation of civil society since Hobbes, Ferguson and Rousseau, and the unprecedented global effort at preserving human dignity in non-violent politics based on human rights undertaken in the 20th-century. It can even be argued that sociology as a discipline emerged from philosophy precisely as an attempt to contain violence by means of understanding the ways in which people can peacefully co-exist in a society. And yet violence itself is a phenomenon traditionally avoided by sociology. This thesis approaches the issues related to violence through the prism of the ways in which practitioners working in support of survivors endeavour to understand the problem. It is thus a second order critical study of sociological explorations of violence. The thesis begins by mapping the field of sociological exploration of the problem and reviewing the debates related to the theorisation and research of violence. In destabilising the category, the theoretical component of the thesis reveals that the process of understanding violence is a non-linear, always incomplete, and difficult process. The empirical research looks at the approach of practitioners in dealing with the consequent contradictions and ambiguities. Its findings show that in order to link understanding violence and supporting the survivors, one needs to define violence dynamically through the concept of trauma and to build a containing framework in which a holding environment can emerge. The holding environment is presented as a concept, which in practice demonstrates that the understanding employed to address violence is not simply an activity of mind but a social and relational category. This requires re-considering the properties of understanding violence and their linkage with other activities of mind in the social realm and with the practicalities of living. The thesis finishes with a recommendation for further research into the collective aetiology of the trauma derived from violence, for the purposes of designing an approach to sociology based on understanding as a nonviolent response to violence.

The promotion of 'active' ageing in later life has been a key development in recent health policy. These changes not only challenge the prevalent view of old age as an inevitable process of biological decline but signify the tendency of lay and expert discourses to increasingly use the notion of risk. Older people's social identities also need to be negotiated in the context of positive (active/freedom/fluid) and negative (passive/dependence/decline) images of ageing. This thesis explored older people's social identities; meanings about lifestyles, emotions, and bodies; and the salience and limitations to 'risk' and 'reflexivity' within everyday life. The research involved the intersection of in-depth qualitative interviews with photo-elicitation with 50 men and women aged between 50 and 96 years. Thematic analysis using Atlas Ti was undertaken. Three interconnected themes emerged: 1) Participants experienced their bodies as a taken-for- granted aspect of their everyday lives until moments when an awareness of the body interrupted their daily activities. At these moments the everyday visibility of the body was heightened and participants reflected on their own meanings and identities about ageing. 2) Emotions were significant as participants described their everyday lives and social interactions. There was a continual tension between inner (private) subjective feelings and experiences of emotions and the outer (public) bodily and spatial expression of these emotions. 3) Reflexive meanings about risk were multifaceted as participants drew upon diverse discourses when making choices about health-related lifestyles. A sense of embodied vulnerability associated with ageing was evident. Meanings and perspectives associated with ageing bodies were therefore central to everyday experiences of growing older. Alternative images of ageing were intertwined within the accounts of the participants as they fluctuated between a sense of ageing as a time of possibilities and a heightened awareness of their embodied vulnerabilities.

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Online Communities have existed for a number of years but evaluation methods allowing their managers to make decisions are limited. These decisions can take the form of resource prioritisation, choice of specific future development areas or termination of Online Communities. This research document introduces a novel 4-step method that can be used to assist this decision-making. A number of interpretations as to what is meant by the term ucommunity" are presented from a variety of disciplines before moving onto the newer concept of "Online Community". The literature does not provide one common meaning for these terms so a definition appropriate for this study was proposed. In this case an Online Community is defined as "a social or business space, supported by technology and Internet tools, in which people with common interests, objectives or values can meet and satisfy their needs". Next, current evaluation techniques were reviewed. From this, and from responses from interviews with Online Community Managers, it was clear that a new evaluation method that could answer business questions in a non-resource intensive manner was required. 4 requirements were identified as key to developing a new evaluation method that would provide benefit to the Online Community practitioners: " It must be simple to implement with minimum use of already limited resources " It must be flexible to allow custornisation for each unique Online Community " It should allow action to be taken to improve the day-to-day management " The measures collected must help answer business questions. To enable an efficient process to be utilised it was proposed to use a classification of Online Communities to reduce the complexity of the problem and to condense large amounts of information into a manageable format. After establishing that no existing classification was appropriate a new one with 4 classes was developed, based on data from literature and interviews with Online Community practitioners. After simplifying the problem by the use of the classification above, attention was turned to generating a new method that would meet the requirements identified previously. This was achieved by extracting key aspects from 3 specific techniques and frameworks, namely The Performance Prism, Performance Measurement Questionnaire and the Extended Web Assessment Method. The resulting method takes account of multiple stakeholders, facilitates definition of measures and recognises the use of perception data in relation to performance evaluation. Supporting material, in the form of flowcharts and templates, was also created to enable the customised measures to be developed in a rapid and resource efficient manner. The method was tested with two Online Communities and the results discussed. Feedback was captured from the participants and changes were subsequently made to improve the method. In addition it became clear that there was a need to explicitly address the "health" of the community aspect in the supporting material. From this research it is clear that the performance of Online Communities can be considered on many levels through this 4-step evaluation method; it takes account of the aspects that are important to a specific community, in a rapid manner. It also confirms that it is possible to engage stakeholders in a dialogue about Online Community performance, thus providing data from them to facilitate future decisions.

Personal and collective emotions play an important role in our private and social lives. Educational research suggests that emotions are powerful motivational forces that can impact upon leadership practices as well as on teaching and learning at individual and classroom level. However, less is known about the role of emotional experiences and displays in relation to leadership practices and school outcomes at organisational level. In order to develop more substantial knowledge, this mixed method study aims to explore the relationship between leadership styles, emotions and school outcomes from an organisational perspective in several urban schools from Timisoara, Romania. A sample of 408 teaching and non-teaching staff from 18 schools took part in a survey and 14 participants from two selected case study schools took part in semi-structured interviews. A widely used model of leadership is proposed by Bass & Avolio (1994) who identify transformational, transactional and laissez-faire practices. In this study, the quantitative data analysis using the Multifactorial Leadership Questionnaire developed by Bass and Avolio (ibid) suggests that a hybrid leadership that combines transformational and transactional elements such as contingent reward, individual consideration and charismatic behaviours is positively associated with positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm and hope and with better outcomes such as perceived school success. The survey findings identify more variation and subtlety of negative emotions compared to positive emotions and also examine the role of self-other rapport in experiencing and displaying emotion at work. Secondly, the qualitative data reveal various contextualized meanings of leadership, emotions and school success, provides an integrated perspective of findings and allows for comparison of the overall results with previously published literature. Furthermore, the thesis presents emergent theoretical models for the study of leadership, emotions and school development and performance. Finally, the implications of the overall findings for policy and practice are discussed by taking into consideration the Romanian cultural and educational context.

Integrativeness (Gardner, 2001) and acculturation (Schumann, 1986) have been influential concepts in the field of second language acquisition (SLA), which propose that second language (L2) learners’ social-psychological identification with the target language (TL) community is essential for successful SLA. The present study ventures to incorporate theories from two separate fields: SLA which has expanded its research scope from cognitive dimensions to social dimensions since the 1990s, and intercultural communication which provides abundant insights into the social integration and identity formation of newcomers in intercultural settings. I explored and co-constructed the hermeneutical meanings which two Japanese women in Britain attached to integration and identity formation, and how such meanings changed over two years. Semi-structured interviews, participant observations, participant diaries, and other supplementary methods (research diaries, e-mails and recordings) were used to collect qualitative data. I played an active role in co-constructing their hermeneutical meanings of interacting with other people in the UK which is presented as a narrative case study. Positioned in a holistic sociocultural perspective, the current research poses questions on fragmentarily defined cognitive constructs, integrativeness and acculturation, and proposes that identification is nurtured and developed through interaction in which one can identify commonalities with one’s interlocutors as individuals, but not solely because of their cultural, ethnic or linguistic affiliations. The participants’ cultural-ethnic identity was often ‘betwixt and between’ in that they felt different from both British and Japanese people who lacked intercultural experience. Such vulnerability of their cultural-ethnic identity was offset by developing a sense of belonging through other social identities (e.g. family, religion) in which mutual acceptance with other members of a community was established. Participants’ cultural-ethnic identity seemed dormant when it was unharmed, but it emerged in the forefront and became the core identity when it was threatened. The participants’ experience of alienation or foreignness triggered them to seek empathetic relationships with other people. This study confirms the importance of the networks formed among foreign nationals who speak English as a lingua franca (ELF), since their sense of comradeship is underpinned by empathy as ‘co-foreigners’ which provided emotional, social and practical support in their daily lives. This study seeks to benefit people who have crossed linguistic, cultural or ethnic boundaries, or people engaged in sending or accepting newcomers who have crossed such boundaries.

Sweden as the great welfare state where everybody is equally welcomed and cared for has for long been the prevailing view. Although Swedish integration policy seems to confirm this view, this is far removed from many people’s experienced reality. I argue that part of this disharmony lies in how West European languages contain and relate to an ‘identity’ construction, which perpetuates and is perpetuated through dichotomies that strengthen the social and political cogency of concepts such as ‘race’, ethnicity and culture. Based on this, I carry out a discourse analysis of Sweden’s major integration policy documents from the mid 1970s up to today. After an eclectic reading of discourses on migration and integration terminology, ‘identity’ and language, I assert the centrality of ‘identity’ construction to everything we do. With this in mind, taking the dialogism promoted by the Bakhtinian Circle as the dichotomy to monologism, I carry out a close dialogic reading in the tradition of Lynn Pearce (1994) and Peter Stallybrass and Allon White (1986). Contextualising the policy documents, I present the history of migration and integration from a Swedish perspective. Focusing on the last five decades, I divide the different historic tendencies into themes ranging from: emigration to labour migration, refugee migration and the European Union, and from immigrant policy to integration policy. Believing that the conceptualisation and the handling of categorisation, segregation, culture, discrimination and racism are all central to a successful integration policy, I analyse the policy documents thematically accordingly. I show how the interdependence of the common ‘identity’ constructions and language sometimes obscures and frequently counteracts the intention of the author. As a result, I argue that the Bakhtinian Circle holds the key to a better understanding of the invincibility of stereotyping within racialised discourses, through applying absolute ‘identity’ constructions in monologic speech, and how this may be counteracted in order to strive for a dialogic approach to the world.