Excerpt 6 June 1988)
5.2 Transcription
Although transcription might seem to be a very mechanical process of rendering oral data into a printed text that can be more easily analyzed at some later point, in qualitative research it is usually considered (1) an inte- gral and important initial phase of data analysis, especially if the person transcribing (the researcher or research assistant) is also involved in the analysis and is able to make note of recurring patterns or other observa- tions while transcribing; and (2) an activity that is very theory laden (Ochs, 1979). In this section, I describe different approaches to transcription and provide examples of transcription conventions or protocols. I also consider the role of transcription in the analytic or interpretive process.
Although many case studies involve data that must be transcribed, not all do. For example, studies of L2 writing development, Internet chat discourse, L2 diaries, or a country’s language policies may not incorpo- rate primarily oral data into the analysis. However, a great deal of applied linguistics research does involve the analysis of either oral raw data (e.g., speech samples or classroom interactions) or oral reflections on experiences (e.g., think-aloud protocols, introspective studies or stimulated recall, or interviews). Most of this interview and observation data is, in turn, tran- scribed, although not necessarily to the same degree of sophistication or detail across all studies.
Transcription is an art and science and also encapsulates theory. Like video-recording (where the camera is placed, what is captured, and how), transcribing is not theoretically neutral, and the various conventions that have been developed for transcription and the decisions researchers make while transcribing have their own epistemological precursors and inter- pretive consequences (Green, Franquiz, & Dixon, 1997; Markee, 2000;
Ochs, 1979; Roberts, 1997). Transcription must therefore be seen as theory driven and theory saturated (Silverman, 2000). The conventions used in transcribing and the level of detail included also depend on what one is studying and the theoretical perspectives implicit in the transcriptions.
In my studies, I have used different kinds of transcription showing varying amounts of detail for different purposes. If the purpose of inter- views is to get information about an interviewee’s educational background, for example, and not to do an analysis of turn-taking behaviors or language proficiency based on the interview, it is probably unnecessary to measure
the length of all pauses with a stopwatch to the nearest 10th or 20th of a second. Nor would it be useful to include mundane nonverbal behaviors, such as eye gaze, nose scratching, or heavy breathing. There are three rea- sons for not providing such detail in those cases:
1. It is very labor expensive and costly; it takes up to 20 hours to transcribe 1 hour of data that does not involve too many speakers or overlap if done in a very finely tuned way, compared to 4 to 8 hours for a less detailed transcription (depending on the type of discourse).
2. Those behaviors are likely to provide little theoretically interesting infor- mation related to the subject’s education background.
3. When reporting the findings later, a very fine tuned transcription can inter- fere with readability, especially if all that is wanted is a brief description of the person’s prior training, language instruction, degrees, and so on.
The same pragmatic principle can also be applied to how one provides glosses or translations for interviews or observations when multiple lan- guages are present. If a linguistic analysis is planned, it may be crucial to provide a gloss for each language item (word, particle, or morpheme) and then a more holistic translation. If one is more interested in the gist of the utterance and less so in the linguistic detail, then an utterance-by-utterance or turn-by-turn translation will probably suffice. If, on the other hand, one is conducting a conversation analysis (CA) of a short recorded segment, a detailed transcription would normally be called for, using highly conven- tionalized procedures associated with CA (Markee, 2000).
In my study of Jim (see Chapter 1), exact pause length was not par- ticularly important to me in some of my analyses. I therefore used a crude system of showing pauses with plus signs (+ represented a short pause and ++ a slightly longer pause), instead of timing micropauses (e.g., (0.2) for 2/10 of a second). In my initial transcription of the first 12 hours of data, it was simply not feasible to transcribe with more detail. But in Chapter 1, when I wanted to show how unforthcoming and seemingly disfluent Jim was on the second retelling of the same picture task (Excerpt 3), and the pause lengths were so painfully long, it seemed important and relevant to quantify the pauses.
A highly technical phonetic transcription is important in intended pho- netic or phonological analyses (as well as certain other kinds of analysis)
but may be less significant, and much less readable, when transcripts are to be used for other kinds of analysis. For example, I could have represented the first line of Excerpt 6 in Chapter 1 as follows: yeh biikaz aa in + kaem- bowdiian in tha kantriisai z now baen [“Yeah because uh in Cambodia in the countryside there are no banks”] as I did in an appendix in Duff (1993a).
This system was used by researchers in Hawaii (e.g., Huebner, 1983; Sato, 1984, 1990). However, it would have made the analysis and presentation of data more cumbersome than necessary for me and other readers.
In contrast to the conventions I used with Jim in Chapter 1, present- ing monologic, monolingual excerpts (taken from dialogic interaction), in Table 5.1 I illustrate the transcription system used in Duff (1995) and in some subsequent studies. That analysis dealt with one Hungarian teacher’s English immersion history class at a Hungarian high school. Kati, the teacher, was calling on a student, Gabi, to come up and give a presentation (lecture).
The transcription conventions used in this excerpt, which are quite commonly used by others as well, are shown in Table 5.2.
Transcripts involving extensive use of other languages may be orga- nized differently, as in Table 5.3 from Duff (1993c), showing a teacher’s instructions to students in Hungarian to get ready for a felelés, or recita- tion on Roman history. An utterance-by-utterance global translation is pro- vided on the right, but word-by-word or morpheme-by-morpheme literal
Table 5.1 Transcription of Classroom Discourse
Kati: A::nd on: - decree on peace - Gabi (1.2) can give a lecture.
Gabi: Right now?
Kati: Right now.
(9.8) ((Gabi comes up to front))
And perhaps: - for that - you ((to class)) might as well open the Atlas.
(1.6) [Okay?
S: [(xxx)
Gabi: It’s on - 49. Page 49. ((in student atlas)) (3.9)
Kati:
S: 49?
Miről fogsz beszélni, Gabi? ((What are you going to talk about Gabi?)) Gabi: I(‘ll) write it on the board.
(Duff, 1995, pp. 519–520)
translations or glosses are not included because a syntactic analysis was not intended.
Sometimes journal or book editors will also ask for different kinds of transcription than the one provided. For example, in a book chapter I wrote about Hungarian classroom discourse, I was asked to take out the Hungar- ian (L1) and present only the translated talk in English for reasons of space (Duff, 1996). In other articles, I have been asked to take out certain kinds of redundancy in interview excerpts, such as false starts, repetitions, and
Table 5.2 Sample Transcription Conventions
Participants: T = teacher; S = student; SS = two students; SSS = many students. Initials used for students identifiable by name (e.g., M, SZ, J) rather than the generic “S.”
•
Left bracket, [: The beginning of overlapping speech, shown for both speakers; second speaker’s bracket occurs at the beginning of the line of the next turn, rather than in alignment with previ- ous speaker’s bracket (for word processing reasons only; many people align the exact point of overlap, but the formatting can easily become misaligned).
•
Equal sign: For “latched” utterances; indicates speech across turns without any pause or break;
shown for both speakers.
•
(#): Marks the length of a pause; (.2) is 2/10 of a second; (2.0) is 2 seconds.
•
(Words): The words in parentheses were not clearly heard; (x) = unclear word; (xx) = two unclear words; (xxx) = three or more unclear words.
•
Underlined (or italicized) words: Spoken with emphasis.
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CAPITAL LETTERS: Loud speech.
•
Double parentheses, ((: Researcher’s comments, like “laughs,” “coughs,” “T writes on board,” etc.; relevant details pertaining to interaction, or gloss for Hungarian when there is code-switching.
•
Colon: Sound or syllable is unusually lengthened, e.g., rea::lly lo:ng.
•
Period: Terminal falling intonation.
•
Comma: Rising, continuing intonation.
•
Question mark: High rising intonation, not necessarily at the end of a sentence.
•
Unattached dash (-): A short, untimed pause (e.g., less than 0.2 seconds). In some transcripts, the same as plus sign (+).
•
One-sided attached dash-: A cutoff, often accompanied by a glottal stop (e.g., a self- correction); a dash attached on both sides reflects spelling conventions or a glottal stop.
•
Arrow: Flags something in the interaction to which the author is drawing attention.
•
Numbering of lines: May also be used to facilitate reference to particular segments of discourse.
•
so on, to enhance readability and to also shorten the excerpts, particularly since the purpose of including the excerpts was to provide the content and include the voice of the interviewee. Formal properties of the talk were not of primary interest (e.g., Duff, 2001).
Transcription is a laborious and time-consuming task. It is therefore important to fully consider one’s options and also the expectations of the field or domain in which one is working before collecting data. Also, the traditions that have developed for the preparation of transcripts for differ- ent kinds of discourse analysis have generally been carefully considered. If claiming to do a conversation analysis of case study interviews or observed interactions, then be sure to comply with the conventions established for that approach (Markee, 2000). If a more general discourse analysis is planned, then see what other options there are, how others have proceeded, and what conventions, analytic tools, and techniques they have used. Also, consider how the reader will react to the readability or clarity of excerpts.
It is therefore helpful and often necessary to use established transcrip- tion procedures when working within a particular tradition and research community. However, you can also develop new conventions if existing ones are inadequate for your purposes, but you must provide a key or appendix with the codes or conventions and then apply them consistently. Another word of advice is to have someone else (possibly the speakers themselves) listen to key excerpts you have transcribed to verify your interpretation of their utterances and the reliability of your transcript. For other examples and discussion of transcription, see Markee (2000), Richards (2003), Sil- verman (2001), and van Lier (1988).
On a very practical note, various kinds of tools exist for transcribing cassette tapes, such as conventional transcriber playback machines with
Table 5.3 Example of a Transcript in Another Language (Hungarian) T: Na. Kérem szépen. Mindenféle gyönyörűség
lesz ma. Nem biztos, hogy erről a rómaiak is így vélekedte:k.
Now then. There are going to be various kinds of fun things today. I’m not sure if the Romans thought the same.
(8.0) Na kérem szépen. (8.0) Now then.
Könyveket becsukni (2.0), ((Ss close books))
füzetet is Close your textbooks (2.0), ((Ss close books))
exercise books too
(4.0) (4.0)
Kicsit gyorsabban … A bit more quickly …
Source: Duff (1993c, p. 183)
foot pedals to easily replay an utterance and with voice speed controls and headphones to free up hands for typing. Some of my students have also successfully used voice recognition software, trained to their own voices, to revoice what they hear on recordings for easier (oral) inputting of data;
this approach is especially suitable for content-based interviews with long stretches of interviewee talk. More applied linguists now also use digital recorders or digitized analog audio- or video-recordings to facilitate tran- scription, data management, and coding. Having digitized audio-video data facilitates the alignment of sound/video files and digitized transcripts when one event has been recorded; furthermore, it allows the alignment of data from multiple concurrently occurring events that have been recorded, when several groups are doing group work at the same time, for example. Having digitized files also permits the inclusion of audio and video tracks together with transcripts in digital presentations using PowerPoint or comparable programs. Some of these research tools can be downloaded free from the Web, such as SoundWriter from the University of California, Santa Bar- bara (http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/projects/transcription/tools.html).