This research project explores the communicative processes involved when young people engage in both existing and developing peer support systems as part of their school's anti-bullying strategy. This contemporary approach to peer participation is based upon the traditional concept of 'befriending'. However, as this thesis will show, this type of 'support' is expected to reach into the realms of professional 'listening' and abide by the rules and regulations of child welfare and protection issues. Ingi ained in the supervision of these schemes and their training methods are requirements to adhere to the legislative criteria of pastoral care in British schools today. I will discuss the emergence, development and fostering of this concept in far greater detail later in chapter 1. However, for the time being, I would like to highlight that this project will show the difficulties that the young people who contributed to this research face when they become involved in these types of schemes. This project is a qualitative analysis of discursive strategies and devices employed by pupils, teachers and trainers during and after their training period. In chapter 2 ,1 will introduce and define the area of language based research, in general, as I show how the study of language has developed from a social psychology perspective. This will then allow me to move forward, tracing the more structural analytical approach of Conversation Analysis and the subsequent emergence of Discourse Analysis during the later half of the previous century. I will clarify why this methodology has been chosen and how its application will generate an in-depth, language-based thesis of the processes of interaction and its discursive devices and strategies used by young people involved in these systems. Various reseai'ch questions will be answered through analysis of a variety of qualitative data. These include video recordings of the process of training for young people, focus group discussions with participating peer supporters and those hoping to embark on training, semi-structured interviews and a recorded 'unsupervised discussion' with pupils who are antagonistic toward the peer support system.