Blackwell Reference Online

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Transcription is the process of converting recordings of social or communicative human interaction into written text. Transcribing audiotaped or videotaped speech acts, conversations, interviews, or other forms of human engagement might be considered to be a relatively simple task, largely a chore or a secretarial matter. After all, to transcribe, one need only write down what was said by the parties involved in the interaction. The writing down of what was said, however, is viewed by researchers in a variety of fields (including linguistics, communication, psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, and nursing) as only part of the transcription task. In addition to what was said, transcription often involves attending to how things were said (timing, volume, emphasis, nonverbals), how they were not said (silences), and where they were said (context and environment) Furthermore, opinions in various disciplines differ as to what the product of the process of transcription represents. In some instances, a transcript is viewed as a transparent, printed representation of the recorded interaction (a hard copy ), and it becomes the actual data used for further analysis. Traditions in other fields position transcripts as mediated forms of the original data that are useful aids for analysis, but that never are considered to be identical to the audio or video recordings, which ... log in or subscribe to read full text