Varieties of Transcriptions

Over the past twenty years at least, it has become clear that transcription is not a simple mechanical process. It is a process of selection of what to move from one medium (the voice, the movement) to another (the paper, the table, the picture or graphic). This "what" must be determined on theoretical grounds. The very nature of the final representation must be carefully thought out since it will always constitute theoretical choices that should made be explicit (Ochs 1979).

The following is a set of possible styles of transcription each accomplishing different tasks, from the purely archival (designed to give the researcher a rough handle of what is on a recording in case it is needed for further analysis) to the analytic (designed to summarize graphically the findings of analysis).

With an emphasis on the audio track

• Subject content
• Rough
• Literal
• Literal with some paraverbal cues
(useful for detailed conversational analysis focusing on interactional patterns between speakers)
• Timed, literal with more paraverbal cues (useful to highlight temporal relationships)
• Wave form (useful for timing purposes and exact analysis of interpersonal synchronization)

With an emphasis on the video track

• Stick drawing of some body stance
• Frame grabs with summary of behavior and talk.

From transcripts to models (analytic representations highlighting properties of the event) that:

1. highlight who participates
2. highlight who does what
3. highlight how people mutually organize their bodies