A word from Du Bois

 

"Although transcribing is sometimes thought of as a kind of manual labour, merely a necessary means of producing certain valuable end products, in reality the process itself has tremendous potential for enlightening its practitioners, and for generating the level of keen perception and intimate knowledge that can translate into theoretical insight and new research directions." (p. 75)

Du Bois, J. W. (1991). Transcription design principles for spoken discourse research. Pragmatics, 1 (1), 71-106.