In his landmark contribution to the field of language shift/maintenance, Fishman maintains that, for language shift to be reversed, “face-to-face, small-scale social life must be pursued in their own right and focused upon directly.” This article responds to this call to examine language shift at the level of face-to-face interaction. It describes a specific interactional practice, referred to as “medium request,” observed in the Rwandan community in Belgium, where language shift is taking place from Kinyarwanda-French bilingualism to French monolingualism. The practice consists in the fact that younger members of the community, when in interaction with adult members, constantly (albeit indirectly) request the latter to “medium-switch” from Kinyarwanda to French. The article therefore describes the practice as a specific type of language/medium negotiation, examines its various strategies, and shows how, through this interactional practice, members of the community actually talk language shift into being. (Medium request, language shift, language maintenance, language/medium negotiation, other-initiated medium repair, embedded medium repair, generalized content repair, targeted content repair, understanding check)

One of the issues studies of language alternation among bilingual speaker still have to resolve is that of the b ase language (Auer, 1997; Deprèz de Hérédia, 1991), of a s cheme of interpretation (Garfinkel, 1967), with respect to which categories of language alternation are identified. Starting from the fact that the need for a scheme of interpretation is not felt by analysts only, but also by speakers themselves, this paper argues that, in order to “discover” the relevant scheme, a speakers' own perspective must be adopted. Therefore, the paper illustrates this perspective by examining two activities bilingual speakers accomplish while talking, namely medium repair and o ther-language repair. Both activities are accomplished when, missing the mot juste in one language, speakers draw on their other languages to overcome that difficulty. As the discussion shows, through their own orientation to their language choice acts while accomplishing these activities, speakers themselves reveal, to one another and to analysts as well, the scheme they are attending to here and now. As that scheme speakers themselves orient to need not consist of the use of one language, in the paper, I refer to it, not as the base language, but as the medium of a bilingual conversation.

This paper is based on bilingual conversations we have collected in two bilingual settings, namely service encounters in Barcelona and ordinary informal conversations among bilingual Rwandese in Belgium. On the basis of these data, the paper raises the question of whether the concept of l anguage is a useful one in accounting for language choice acts among bilingual speakers. Observation of the data reveals that the concept of language can account for bilinguals' language choice acts only partially. This observation is found to be consistent with Gumperz' (1982) argument according to which, in talk, speakers themselves do not necessarily orient to the notion of language, but rather to their “own notion of code.” In the paper, we refer to that speakers' own code as the medium of a bilingual conversation. Therefore, our main argumentis that, for an account of language choice among bilingual speakers, the concept of language need be suspended in favor of that of the medium of a bilingual conversation. In the paper, three connected questions are specifically addressed. How do speakers themselves establish the medium? What versions may the medium take? How can analysts discover the medium?

There is evidence that telephone consultations in general practice are typically shorter than face-to-face consultations and that fewer problems are presented in them. AimTo compare the communicative practices of doctors and patients in face-to-face and telephone consultations, in order to understand the contrasts between the two consulting modes. Design of studyConversation analysis. SettingEight NHS GP surgeries in Scotland. MethodTranscription and conversation analysis of 32 face-to-face and 33 telephone consultations. ParticipantsEighteen GPs and 65 patients. ResultsThere are no underlying contrasts between the communicative practices used in face-to-face and telephone consultations. Telephone consultations are typically used by patients to deal with a limited range of single-issue concerns, whereas a wide range of different problem types is dealt with in face-to-face consultations. Most telephone consultations for new problems lead to a face-to-face meeting rather than a diagnosis, making them shorter than equivalent face-to-face consultations. Interaction in telephone consultations is continuous and orderly, but in face-to-face consultations there are periods of silence that facilitate the introduction of additional topics, including social speech and rapport building. Doctors on the telephone are less likely to elicit additional concerns than in face-to-face consultations, and ask fewer questions when patients present self-diagnosed problems or describe problems with treatment. ConclusionDoctors in general practice do not substantially change their communicative behaviour on the telephone. Telephone consultations are shorter and include less problem disclosure than face-to-face meetings, partly because they are typically mono-topical and partly because of intrinsic differences between the two channels.