This thesis sets out to investigate the field of public service interpreting in southern Spain, with a particular emphasis on the position of volunteer interpreters working at two different healthcare institutions. It looks at the power relationships that develop between agents that hold different degrees of control and autonomy, especially in a context where individuals hold different forms and volume of capital in each encounter. Drawing on Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, the study offers an in-depth examination of a group of volunteer interpreters as legitimate agents of the wider field of public service interpreting and the sub-field of healthcare interpreting, while looking at their impact on the structures and ethics of the larger field. This is the first project to employ Bourdieu’s theory in a sustained case study of a healthcare context where volunteer interpreters operate as legitimised institutional agents. One of the peculiarities of the two settings under examination is that volunteer interpreters seem to have acquired a high degree of institutionalisation, which provides them with a large volume of symbolic capital and allows them to take part in the field as legitimate members of the healthcare team, often occupying similar positions to those adopted by doctors at the top end of the field hierarchy. The study adopts an ethnographic approach based on a triangulation of data: participant observation of volunteer interpreters, audio-recorded interpreter-mediated interaction and focus-group interviews with volunteer interpreters. The primary data that informs the thesis consists of four focus groups carried out with volunteer interpreters in two different Spanish hospitals. The additional use of participant observations and audio-recordings make it possible to examine not only interpreters’ perceptions but also actual behaviour in authentic encounters, and to compare interpreters’ perception of their positioning with the actual positions they often occupy in the field.

The purposes of this study were (a) to examine two groups of healthy older Dutch English bilingual migrants in a New Zealand setting to investigate whether they were showing signs of L2 attrition with accompanying L1 reversion post-retirement, and (b) to identify possible factors which might play a role in the incidence of any L2 attrition and concomitant L1 reversion. Previous research has focused on similar groups of migrants in the Australian context, while New Zealand based research has focused on language shift and maintenance amongst three generations of migrants. The research design involved an analysis of sociolinguistic life, using questionnaires. These included self-assessments of L1 and L2 proficiency at three key times: on arrival in New Zealand, at time of ultimate attainment and post-retirement. Further, an analysis of assessments of respondents’ L1 and L2 proficiency pre-and post-retirement completed by interviewees’ adult children moderated respondents’ self-reports. The findings revealed a considerable overlap between participants’ self-reports and assessments by their adult children. The study also revealed a relationship between participants’ level of prior education and their ultimate attainment in the L2, with those who had come to New Zealand having learned English at Secondary School English very likely to have achieved a “good” or “very good” level of L2 proficiency. Conversely, those who had not learned the L2 at secondary school prior to arriving in New Zealand, were less likely to have achieved a “very good” level of ultimate attainment as evident both from self-reports and assessments by adult children. The design also included a linguistic analysis of elicited free speech. Data focused on key indicators of age, gender, social class, prior education, occupation and predominant linguistic environment pre- and post-retirement. Free speech was examined for code-switching, response latency and L1 structure in respondents’ spoken L2. Results indicated that a majority of respondents showed minimal if any signs of L2 attrition with concomitant L1 reversion, both as evidenced by their spoken L2 and as indicated by self-reports and assessments by adult children. Any signs of L2 attrition which were found appeared linked to respondents’ level of prior education and L2 proficiency on arrival in New Zealand. Being exposed to a predominantly L1 social environment post-retirement also appeared to result in a lifting of the threshold for L2 lexical items, resulting in a slightly increased response latency in the spoken L2. Three participants said they experienced some problems expressing their healthcare needs to medical professionals, to the extent that they were searching for words. All stated they “got there in the end” but needed more time to paraphrase their health needs. Two subjects avoided the use of the L2 during the interview, even when prompted in English. Three respondents engaged in significant codeswitching from L2 to L1 and vice versa, with two engaging in what Muysken (2000) terms “congruent lexicalisation”. Adult childrens’ reports indicated that the respondents in question had always spoken in this manner, but to a greater extent now, post-retirement. Overall, a number of the healthy older subjects interviewed for the study were showing some signs of increased response latency and lexical retrieval problems when expressing themselves in the L2, but none to the degree that they were no longer able to communicate in that language.

The purposes of this study were (a) to examine two groups of healthy older Dutch English bilingual migrants in a New Zealand setting to investigate whether they were showing signs of L2 attrition with accompanying L1 reversion post-retirement, and (b) to identify possible factors which might play a role in the incidence of any L2 attrition and concomitant L1 reversion. Previous research has focused on similar groups of migrants in the Australian context, while New Zealand based research has focused on language shift and maintenance amongst three generations of migrants. The research design involved an analysis of sociolinguistic life, using questionnaires. These included self-assessments of L1 and L2 proficiency at three key times: on arrival in New Zealand, at time of ultimate attainment and post-retirement. Further, an analysis of assessments of respondents’ L1 and L2 proficiency pre-and post-retirement completed by interviewees’ adult children moderated respondents’ self-reports. The findings revealed a considerable overlap between participants’ self-reports and assessments by their adult children. The study also revealed a relationship between participants’ level of prior education and their ultimate attainment in the L2, with those who had come to New Zealand having learned English at Secondary School English very likely to have achieved a “good” or “very good” level of L2 proficiency. Conversely, those who had not learned the L2 at secondary school prior to arriving in New Zealand, were less likely to have achieved a “very good” level of ultimate attainment as evident both from self-reports and assessments by adult children. The design also included a linguistic analysis of elicited free speech. Data focused on key indicators of age, gender, social class, prior education, occupation and predominant linguistic environment pre- and post-retirement. Free speech was examined for code-switching, response latency and L1 structure in respondents’ spoken L2. Results indicated that a majority of respondents showed minimal if any signs of L2 attrition with concomitant L1 reversion, both as evidenced by their spoken L2 and as indicated by self-reports and assessments by adult children. Any signs of L2 attrition which were found appeared linked to respondents’ level of prior education and L2 proficiency on arrival in New Zealand. Being exposed to a predominantly L1 social environment post-retirement also appeared to result in a lifting of the threshold for L2 lexical items, resulting in a slightly increased response latency in the spoken L2. Three participants said they experienced some problems expressing their healthcare needs to medical professionals, to the extent that they were searching for words. All stated they “got there in the end” but needed more time to paraphrase their health needs. Two subjects avoided the use of the L2 during the interview, even when prompted in English. Three respondents engaged in significant codeswitching from L2 to L1 and vice versa, with two engaging in what Muysken (2000) terms “congruent lexicalisation”. Adult childrens’ reports indicated that the respondents in question had always spoken in this manner, but to a greater extent now, post-retirement. Overall, a number of the healthy older subjects interviewed for the study were showing some signs of increased response latency and lexical retrieval problems when expressing themselves in the L2, but none to the degree that they were no longer able to communicate in that language.

Covid-19-pandemin har haft och har en stor inverkan på samhällen över hela världen. Myndigheter har varit tvungna att vidta extraordinära åtgärder för att anpassa samhällslivet till extraordinära tider. När pandemin var ett faktum i Sverige utfördes plötsligt i princip samtliga tolktjänster inom vården på distans. Den här studien grundar sig på en webb-enkät riktad till yrkesverksamma tolkar inom den offentliga sektorn i Sverige. Frågorna rör upplevelser som tolkar haft under denna övergång till distanstolkning, vilka utmaningar de har ställts inför och vilka strategier de tagit till för att fullfölja sina tolkuppdrag inom sjukvården. Resultatet visar att tolkar under Covid-19-pandemin upplever ett förstärkt ansvar för att främja kommunikationen i patientmöte n där svenska inte är gemensamt språk. De är medvetna om att förmågan att genomföra distanstolkning utgör ett viktigt bidrag till att minska pandemins negativa påverkan, såväl för individen (patienten) som för samhället. En slutsats är att många tolkar har lyckats anpassa sig till distanstolkning inom vården oavsett tidigare erfarenhet med distansarbete. Studien pekar också på hur angeläget det är att distanstolkning får ökad uppmärksamhet från myndigheternas sida när det gäller tolkars villkor och arbetsmiljö, inte minst när det gäller kommunikationsutrustning. / The Covid-19 pandemic has had and has a major impact on communities all over the world. The authorities have been forced to take extraordinary measures to adapt society to extraordinary times. When the pandemic was a fact in Sweden, suddenly all interpreting services in healthcare  had to be performed remotely. This study is based on a web survey directed professional interpreters in the public sector in Sweden. The questions concern the interpreters' experiences during this transition toward remote interpreting, what challenges they faced and what strategies they have developed to fulfill their interpreting assignments in healthcare. The result shows, that the interpreters during the Covid-19-pandemic faced an increased responsibility to facilitate the communication in health care meetings where Swedish is not a common language. They are aware that the ability to carry out remote interpretation is an important contribution to reducing the negative impact of the pandemic, both for individuals (patients) and for society. A conclusion is, that many interpreters have succeeded in adapting to remote interpreting in healthcare, regardless of previous experience with work on telephone. The study also points out the importance of paying more attention to remote interpreting from the authorities, when it comes to interpreters' conditions and working environment, not least to communication equipment.