Week 4b: transcribing spoken data

Question 1

What does transcription involve?

Answer 1

‘Transcription involves both interpretive decisions (what is transcribed?) and representational decisions (how is transcribed?).

These decisions ultimately respond to the contextual conditions of the transcription process itself, including the transcriber’s own expectations and beliefs about the speakers and the interaction being transcribed; the intended audience of the transcript; and its purpose’ (Bucholtz, 2000)

Question 2

Role of transcription in analysis

Answer 2

‘Transcription is first of all an attempt to capture talk as it actually occurs, in all its apparent messiness. As a result, CA transcripts can often appear formidably complex to the untrained eye’ (Hutchby and Wooffitt, 1998)

The goal is to create a transcript ‘that will look to the eye how it sounds to the ear’ (Schenkein, 1978)

Question 3

‘eye dialect’ – advantages/disadvantages?

Answer 3

eg. you c’n ahl come up here
In CA, unconventional orthography is sometimes recommended in order to capture the flavour of the original speech
of/off; of; uff; ohv; awv; awf; aff

Limitations of written language as a representation of spoken language

Coates and Thornborrow (1999): ‘the ear is a subjective instrument at best, and one transcriber’s hearing of a given chunk of talk will inevitably differ from another’s.’

Question 4

Transcription conventions / symbols

Answer 4

Page layout; line/turn numbering; participant labelling

Orthographic representation

Matters of timing: pauses, gap (.) (2.0)
run-on utterances (latching) =

Overlapping talk [ ]

Simultaneously starting utterances [[

Self-interruption (want some- all of it)

Intonation ↑ ↓
rising inflection?

prosodic quality LOUDER quieter ˚ stress (underlined)

Contextual material ((phone rings))

Remember to include a key for your transcription conventions