the mighty Fitzroy under seige

 

Recent rains have resulted in the growth of large masses of water hyacinths. While the result LOOKS interesting in this pic. the growth plays havoc with life on the river.

This week saw me beginning academic work for 2008. As always there is plenty to be done. Over the next few weeks i will juggle preparing teaching materials for Term 1 with working on the draft journal article on transcription (NOT done last year as I had planned). Today, I spent some time re-reading an excellent book chapter on transcription written by Carolyn Baker.

Baker, C. D. (1997).Transcription and representation in literacy research. In J. Flood, S. B. Heath & D. Lapp (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching literacy through the communicative and visual arts (pp. 110 – 120). Broadway, NY: International Reading Association.

In the chapter Baker reviews transcription articles and draws out three distinctive points about transcripts:

"(1) that the practices of transcription are forms of reasoning and writing that reflect cultural membership, (2)that practices of transcription are literacy practices in themselves: how do we put words and actions on paper? how do we write and draw our transcript characters, and (3) most important, that transcription practices assemble characters in particular ways and assign social and moral order to the literacy scenes observed." (p. 110)

What I really liked about the chapter was the way it provided an EM account of the literature and transcription, evident in Baker's use of headings such as "The transcript as an account of the practical reasoning that produced it" (p. 119). In this concluding section she writes:

"Transcripts, then, are accounts of the theoretical and analytical work that went into producing them. Making transcripts is part of the work of making sense of what is observed in recorded sounds and images. Making sense of events seen and heard involves charaterizing them in some way, assigning some kind of order to them. The transcription process imposes structure and order on events in the "pre-textual" realm of everyday life. What structure, order, meaning, rationality or morality those events are made to have are products of the work of transcription. Transcription, in this sense, is a process of theorizing and demonstrating social order; the transcript is an account of that theory of social order." (p. 119)

Wish I'd thought and written that!