"Transcription as theory"

This morning I have been re-reading a seminal article on transcription by Elinor Ochs. The article was orginally published in Elinor Ochs and Bambi B. Schiefflen (Eds.). Developmental pragmatics, (pp. 43 - 72). New York: Academic Press. The copy I have is a re-pulished copy:

Ochs, E. (1999). Transcription as theory. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The discourse reader, (pp. 167 - 182). London; New York: Routledge.

This is a very useful article, particularly because it addresses considerations related to transcript layout and use of symbols when transcribing verbal and nonverbal actions from audio- and video-recordings. For example, Ochs establishes the importance of nonverbal action (using child language research to illustrate) and then shows how recording nonverbal actions can be challenging (e.g. there are many of them and including too many can "crowd" the transcript and impact on its readability, utterances may occur concurrently with nonverbal actions although not necessary starting or ending at the same time, numerous nonverbal actions may occur within an utterance, and so on).

Ochs also addresses some of the "consequences" for overlooking transcription procedures or taking them for granted:

"researchers rarely produce a transcript that does reflect their research goals and the state of the field. Furthermore, developmental psycholinguistics are unable to read from one another's transcripts the underlying theoretical assumptions." (p. 169).

Ochs makes these points in relation to child language research in particular. She illustrates through consideration of the use of phonetic spelling (versus standard orthographic spelling)in young children's sound play.

"In sound play, the shape, rather than the content of utterances is foregrounded and the function of language is playful and phatic (in the case of sound-play dialogue) rather than information: where the researcher uses standard orthography, not all instances of sound play can be easily seen. This assumes importance when a case of sound play is reported in the literature, as in my own situation. It is difficult to assess whether its rare appearance in the literature reflects the nature of children's verbal behaviour or the nature of psycholinguistic transcription procedures." (p. 169)

The point Ochs makes it that transcription impacts on the generalizability of studies within child language research because transcripts "influence and constrain what generalizations emerge" (p. 168)

In recent feedback on a draft journal article of mine one reviewer made the point that my references were dated and suggested that i draw on more current work. While I took the point and addressed more current work in my revisions, I felt strongly that some early work just hasn't been replicated well enough to replace earlier research and scholarship. This article would be an example.