CHAPTER 2

TRANSCRIBING CONVERSATION
GOOD AFTERNOON!
Note: Pages 34-43 of the book are not required.
 What is transcription?
Answer: It is a written version of a recording.
In conversation analysis, we transcribe naturally occurring, spontaneous
interactions. In other words, we transfer recorded interactions into a written
format so that they would be easier to analyze. That is not to say that we should
discard the original file.
A transcription of a conversation not only includes symbols but also verbal
exchanges. However, it does not always include how words are said. It depends
on the aims of the analyst. The more information a transcription includes, the
more informative it is, though. That is why I told you to scrap non-verbal
communication, which includes special signs that complicate an analysis, but it all
depends on what I as an analyst am interested in. Usually, non-visual information
is kept to a minimum. We usually transcribe what is being said, but how it is
being said is considered extra information. We do have a certain code to follow
in order to show what a participant has emphasized in saying a sentence.
In conversation analysis, transcription refers to the process of converting
spoken language or communication events into written form. This written
representation typically includes not only the words spoken but also various
features of the interaction, such as pauses, intonation, overlapping speech, and
other elements that convey the dynamics of the conversation.
 Transcription in conversation analysis is more detailed and nuanced compared
to traditional written transcripts. It aims to capture the subtle nuances of
communication, including the timing, rhythm, and intonation patterns, as well as
non-verbal elements like gestures and facial expressions. This level of detail is
important for researchers in conversation analysis to closely examine and analyze
the structure and organization of talk in natural settings. The resulting transcripts
serve as the basis for detailed analyses of the conversational dynamics and the
ways in which participants co-construct meaning through their interaction.
- Chat GPT
In any book dealing with conversation analysis, you would either find the
transcription system that is used in the book at the start or as an index at the end
of the book.
A transcript is a text that represents an event rather than being the event itself.
An analyst does not add anything to a transcript. They merely represent an
original recording in a written format.
One can be a transcriber, a conversation analyst, or both. As a transcriber, I
may be subjective in choosing the aspects that I will focus on. For instance, do I
need to include emphasis? Intonational patterns? Overlaps? Pauses and their
durations? I decide whether to ignore any or all of these, but I cannot ignore the
verbal, and I cannot add anything.
As we said, a transcript is a text that represents an event rather than being the
event itself, but:
 What is an event?
Answer: An event is the recorded interaction that a conversation analyst
transcribes and analyzes.
In conversation analysis, an "event" refers to a specific part of a conversation,
like a short exchange or a longer sequence of turns. It helps researchers
understand how meaning is created as participants take turns and manage
communication.
- Chat GPT
All that we have said entails that a transcript is not a substitute for the original
recording because certain aspects of a recording are always missing from the
transcript. More importantly, as we mentioned the other day, an analyst could
always go back to the original recording for further analysis. An analyst may have
been tired at a certain point, causing them to mishear something, misinterpret it,
or overlook it altogether. That is why we say that a transcript makes it easier to
have an overview of an interaction, add comments to it, and analyze it but the
original audio or video recording is indispensable as it is the source.

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 A transcript is a secondary analysis tool that we rely on in conducting an
analysis. That said, a transcript is also indispensable because one cannot conduct
an analysis without relying on it. However, one has to be aware that a transcript is
not objective. As an analyst or transcriber, I always have biases or influences. For
instance, as mentioned earlier, it is an analyst’s decision whether to include some
aspect of an interaction or not in their transcript. It is a personal, subjective
decision. Additionally, one is bound to be subjective in the way they perceive
things. One cannot possibly replicate an interaction down to the last detail.
Therefore, the process of transcription is subjective. It is neither neutral nor
objective. It is a partial representation of the source. For instance, the
miscommunication that usually happens in written chat. Had a conversation
been face-to-face, it would have been a lot clearer and less confusing since one
can see the person they are talking to and note their body language and how they
say things.
Student: Can I add or remove words from a transcript?
Professor: As we said earlier, you cannot add anything, and if you remove
something for whatever reason, you have to indicate it by writing either 3
horizontal dots (…) to indicate deletion within a single turn or three vertical dots
( ) to indicate deletion across turns.
Watch this:
- (Sex and the City – Season 04 – Episode 12)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlJBkaRylv0
- YouTube: Cinema and the Ring - Sex and the City TV
(Part 1)
Carrie: but his stuff was everywhere.
(man singing)
It's not unusual to be loved by anyone. It's not unusual to be loved by anyone.
When I see you hanging around with anyone, it's not unusual to see me cryin'.
Charlotte: You're getting engaged!
Carrie: I threw up. I saw the ring and I threw up. That's not normal.
Samantha: That's my reaction to marriage.
(Part 2)
Charlotte: What did the ring look like?
Carrie: That's the other thing. The ring was not good.
Miranda: What do you mean?
Carrie: It was a pear-shaped diamond with a gold band.
Samantha: No wonder you threw up.
Carrie: It’s just not me.

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 Miranda: You wear gold jewelry.
Carrie: Yeah, like ghetto gold, for fun. But this is my engagement ring.
Miranda: I helped pick the ring.
Carrie: I wonder when it’s gonna happen.
(Part 3)
Carrie: do you know when he’s going to do it?
Miranda: no, and you’re on your own. I’m no longer involved!
Carrie: Now you’re not involved! Now that I'm stuck with the bad ring.
Carrie: See, that's a nice ring. Aidan should have known that ring wasn't me.
How can I marry a guy who doesn't know which ring is me?
Samantha: Exactly, honey. Wrong ring, wrong guy.
(Part 4)
Carrie: That night I surprised myself. Miranda: Who is it?
Steve: It’s me!
Carrie: And Miranda was getting a surprise as well.
Miranda: What, are you fucking crazy?
Steve: That's your answer?
(the end)
Dear students,
I also find it strange that your doctor played the video for the students but said
nothing about it. She might in an upcoming lecture.
- Transcriptionist
Conversation analysis is usually only interested in the words, while emphasis,
pauses and durations of, etc. are all considered extra information that an analyst
could skip if they wanted to. On the other hand, in discourse analysis, one is
usually interested in monitoring the cohesion and coherence of a text, the
language, and the structures, whereas the paralinguistic and suprasegmental
features are usually considered unnecessary.
Student:
Like translation?
Professor:
More or less. Similarly to a conversation analyst, a translator tries their best to
be faithful to the source, but it is just not possible to create an exact replica of an
original source. it also depends on the kind of translation you are referring to.
For instance, translating poetry requires a translator who is poetic, in a way.
Additionally, one cannot possibly expect the kind of connotations that language
might create in the minds of all readers, connotations that the original author did
not intend.

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 Transcription then is not simply a representation of talk, but an analytic tool
which helps the researcher to notice features of the talk being transcribed and to
attend to detailed aspects of talk which may not be apparent outside the act of
transcription.
- Heath and Luff, 1993
Transcription helps researchers notice the feature being transcribed. For
instance, remember the little arrow that is placed before an important junction in
a conversation? By using this arrow, a transcriber is saying, “This part of the
conversation is important.”
What you have just seen in the Sex and the City clip was what has been said. It
is only the words. If you are doing discourse analysis, you would be interested in
the cohesion and coherence of the transcribed text, the pronouns, the
vocabulary, the structures, verb tenses, etc. but a conversation analyst is
interested in how things are said, which adds depth to one’s analysis. It also gives
the chance for an analyst to indicate dialectical expressions such as “gonna” for
“going to,” which enriches the connotations of language. That said, it is
important to try and strike a balance between details and accessibility in an
analysis because including too many symbols makes a text inaccessible to some
readers, especially when adding non-visual elements. For instance, the example
on page 39.

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 the system should not have too many symbols which are unfamiliar to speakers
of the language and which require a large amount of specialized knowledge in
order to be useful.
- Heritage, 1984b
One should not assume that every reader of the transcript is an expert, and that
is why a transcription system of symbols is provided in all books on conversation
analysis.
 What contextual information can you derive from the following?
(46) [Car conversation]
Nick: on- [which] day' s your anniversary?
Sasha: sixth. June.
Nick: the sixth,
Elvis: yeah,
- Liddicoat, p. 15
Student: It involves three participants.
Student: It is happening in a car.
 Do we know the gender of the participants?
Student: two males and a female.
Professor: Sasha could be male or female, although more often than not, it is
used for a female. So you have to keep an open mind because as long as you do
not have a he or a she in the text, you cannot be 100% positive about a
participant's gender.
Student: Somebody is married.
Professor: The conversation is about an anniversary, which can be any type of
anniversary. It does not have to involve a marriage. So careful not to add extra
information to the text. We cannot tell if someone is married or not.
There is a short overlap in line 1 that starts and ends at the word “which.”
In line 2, the dots indicate a gradual falling intonation.
Note: You might get a question like this in the exam.
The following conversation is taking place between X and Y. Keep in mind
that the names given to these participants do not indicate any gender, age,
occupation, religious background, etc.
 What do you make of the following?
(2) [UTCLJ66.3 (Drummond, 1989)]
X: Is that who we use to do those dividers
Y: Yeah.
(0.9)
Y: [and she] said it took- they didn't do- (.)

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 X: [Well]
Y: very good proof reading or anything
- Liddicoat, p. 15
Line 1: X asks a question.
Line 2: Y answers the question with a falling intonation. So grammatically and
intonationally speaking, line 3 should be the end of the conversation, indicated
by the 0.9-long silence.
So far, the pause in line 3 belongs to nobody because the question-answer
adjacency pair is complete, and there is no need for any more elaboration.
Lines 4 and 5: X and Y overlap. So both of them felt the awkward silence and
wanted to say something. However, Y won the turn and added extra information.
Therefore the pause belongs to them now.
The dash in line 4 indicates that the talk is cut off. So Y changed their mind
about what they were going to say. Also, we do not know what X was going to
say. It could have been a follow-up question or an entirely different topic, among
other possibilities.
The following is an example of an institutional talk between a patient and a
doctor, where the doctor has the upper hand. Keep in mind that there is no
indication as to whether the doctor or patient is male or female. Earlier with X
and Y the conversation was anonymous whereas here, we are given more
information about the social dynamics of the interaction.
Patient: This chemotherapy - it won't have any lasting effects on
having kids, will it?
2.2 secs (pause)
Patient: It will?
Doctor: I'm afraid so
- Applied Linguistics in Language Education By Steven McDonough.
The patient asks a question that requires an answer. However, they did not get
an answer. They got a pause instead, a long and uncomfortable pause that
belonged to the doctor.
Upon not getting an answer, the patient expected that chemotherapy will have
lasting effects on having kids. So the patient rephrased the question from the
negative to the positive, thereby changing its trajectory.
In the mind of the patient, the doctor’s silence was an indication that they were
hedging a dispreferred answer. We will talk about this in more detail later on
when we deal with preference organization. That is one of the techniques that we
as speakers use, where we sometimes translate our own understanding of the
non-verbal (the pause), and this is connected to action inscription. Here, the

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action is a lack of action. It is a pause. The silence was the answer the patient got,
and they wanted to confirm their own understanding.
Preference organization refers to how speakers orient themselves to preferences
and dispreferences in conversation. It involves the study of how participants
signal, negotiate, and manage agreement or disagreement within a conversation.
The concept of preference organization is fundamental to understanding how
participants collaboratively construct social actions and make interactional
decisions.
- Chat GPT
 Is it better to identify participants by their names, using letters, or their
occupation or roles, and why?
Student: I think using their occupation is better.
Professor: In the example with Sasha, had we used “driver” and “passenger,” it
would have sounded as if the driver was a professional paid to drive the other
participants, not a possible friend or partner to them.
Student: I think using names is better because it provides additional
information about a participant's gender, age, background, etc.
Student: I think it depends on what an analyst is interested in.
Professor: Absolutely! We did say earlier that the process of transcription is
subjective.
Sometimes the content of the conversation gives clues to the identity of its
participants. For instance, a doctor-patient interaction.
With regards to using names, social information is encoded into some names
such as Muhammad versus George.
If you have ever done surveys online or on paper, you know that it is usually
indicated somewhere that the information you provide will be anonymous. In
other words, your identity will be protected. Think of this in the context of
analyzing an interview of a political asylum seeker, where anonymity is crucial.
At times, one might opt to use a person's initials, as is the case with some
documentaries and reality shows.
In some cases, there may be legal implications associated with revealing
someone's identity, as is often the situation in a police investigation.
In a nutshell, the way an analyst identifies their participants is of prime
importance. A useful piece of advice that you should keep in mind is to listen
through or watch the recording while noting the areas that you should take into
consideration while naming the participants before you actually name them.
So, which is better? It depends on the particular case you have at hand and
how critical anonymity is regarding your participants.

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 For fear of identification when naming participants, conversation analysts use
pseudonyms.
 Guidelines for Names in Transcripts
Item to Rule of thumb Comment
change
All 1. Preserve syllable length and stress This helps maintain
names: pattern. intonation and emphasis
Examples: patterns, and allows for
A. "Dominic" for “Jonathan.” more accurate overlap
B. "Leila" for “Marta.” marking.
C. "Muggleton Chess Group" for
“Loughborough Bridge Club.”
So I would not replace ‫ دمحم‬with ‫عبد المجيد‬, for example.
Personal 2. Maintain gender change can cause
names: confusion if gender-related
terms come up, e.g.
pronouns.
This is especially true when later on in the conversation, there is a he or a she.
Personal 3. Make sure contractions are if a full name is later
names: possible. contracted to a nickname,
For instance, replace Caroline with or vice versa, your
"Jennifer," not "Monica" so that “Carrie” pseudonyms will have to
can become "Jenny" ("Monnie" is follow suit.
unusual) You'll find it a great help
to read through the whole
transcript first, before
fixing on pseudonyms.
For instance, ‫ جيداء‬and ‫ جوجو‬become ‫ شيماء‬and ‫شوشو‬. So here, we are preserving
the number of syllables and intonation patterns, and making sure contractions
are possible.
Personal 4. Preserve ethnicity, when Beware of stereotyping:
names: appropriate. only maintain ethnicity if
Examples: evidence in the transcript or
A. “Farida” becomes "Halima." the framework of your
B. “Vincenzo” becomes "Guglielmo." analysis indicates that the
C. Dr Williams becomes "Dr ethnicity signaled by these
Hawkins." names is relevant; otherwise
use names from the pool of
unless doing so might identify them!
names in the community.

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 So beware of stereotyping.
Personal 5. Use replacements of similar preserves whatever
names: commonness or rarity. coloring a common vs.
Examples: unusual name may have
A. "Sarah" for “Hannah.”
B. "Dr. Smith" for “Dr. Jones.”
C. "Adolfo" for “Sabino.”
D. "Mrs. Armiston" for “Mrs.
Collingby.”

For instance, ‫ دمحم‬and Adam ‫ رنا‬are common while ‫ زيد‬and ‫ ثريا‬are rare.
Personal 6. Preserve probable conventions of again, avoid
names: age, class and locality. stereotyping; use this
guideline flexibly. Not all
older people have 'older'
names like "Mavis" or
"Arnold", for example.
Few British men are
nicknamed "Skip" or
"Scooter".

For instance, I cannot replace ‫ رنا‬with ‫عمشة‬, ‫ شام‬with ‫مرفت‬, or ‫ طارق‬with ‫مدحت‬.
Place 7. Country names can unless they may help identify the
names: be left unchanged. speaker, e.g. “I come from Turkey, but I
am Kurdish by birth” would need to
become "I come from [country 1] but I
am [ethnicity 2] by birth."
Of course, sometimes these details are
wanted in the analysis. Use carefully.
8. Cities become a city name like "Calencia" in the
[Citynames] transcript might not make the reader
That is only when leaving think of a big city. If the name is
the original city name might supposed to be replacing a big city like
identify the speaker, or when Los Angeles, important city details
a pseudonym loses might be missed as the reader would not
something important (see associate "Calencia" with a big city like
right) Los Angeles.

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 9. Replace names of
towns and villages with
made-up names.
unless they are part of
something very different
from the speakers' own
experiences, like a narrated
story about someone
unrelated and distant.
if you need to replace the names of
places with fictional ones, you should
maintain a consistent style. For example,
if you're renaming the English village
“Silverdale,” you might choose a new
name like "Medderton." Similarly, if
you're renaming the Brisbane suburb
Toowong, you could select a new name
in a similar style, such as "Mureen." The
goal is to ensure that the modified
names fit cohesively within the context
or narrative while preserving a
consistent feel or theme.

If an analyst deems it safe to mention the country out of which a participant

came, the country name can be left unchanged.
Institutio 10. Change the name If the speaker says
nal unless the institution is extremely large they're connected to a
names: and there's no risk to anonymity. company or institution,
A. Keep "I like to eat at McDonald's" even a big one, it's likely
as is (a falsehood), but modify "I teach at safer to use a different
Loughborough University" to "I teach at name.
[Cityname] University."
B. Change "My child goes to
Happikids Nursery" to "My child goes to
Merrytots Nursery."

Source: http://ca-tutorials.lboro.ac.uk/intro1.htm
So if an institution is as big as Damascus University, and you are referring to a
student in it, there is no risk in keeping the name of the institution. If the
institution is rather small, then it is better to change its name.

SEE YOU NEXT TIME!

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