ANT206H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Conversation Analysis, Gail Jefferson
Document Summary
Any transcription system is designed to support a particular kind of analysis. For example, a speech therapist might transcribe talk to emphasize features of pronunciation and intonation, which will help diagnose problems of speech production. In discourse and conversation analysis the style of transcription highlights those features of talk that are important for interaction. For example, information about regional accent will give relatively little information about whether an agreement is enthusiastic, but the length of delay before the agreement starts is extremely informative. The main transcription conventions were developed by the conversation analyst gail jefferson. You may find it rather hard to read transcripts of this kind to start with but that is due to being used to conventional written text. You should quickly see how such transcript gives an accurate feel for the tape. Note that many of the symbols are familiar as punctuation" marks, but here they are re-defined to signify intonation or speech delivery rather than grammar.
