What I like about transcripts

The thing I find most useful about my transcripts (and the video recordings that they are based on) is that I can go back to them. Frequently, I see talk differently -very disconcerting when trying to pull analysis together for a thesis chapter. It is, however, one of the marvels of doing conversation analysis and I am quite sure that my thirty five minutes of classroom talk could keep me an active researcher for a long time if I wanted.

Late last night I got to thinking (once more) about Ivan's line:
Ivan: in the ­ supermar- !ket (0.4) ((laughs))

What I had missed earlier was something to do with his laughter. I knew that he had made a joke. However, the laughter served a more important social action that I had realised. He wasn't laughing at his joke. His laughter occasioned the joke. It showed it to be a joke. No-one else had laughed.