When representing the data for an audience it is preferable to use a known/shared format, and the detailed transcriptions presented in this thesis are based on
Gesprächsanalytisches Transkriptionssystem 2 (GAT2), developed by Selting, et al. (2009). This system shares most of the principles of the transcription developed by Gail Jefferson, which is the common transcription form within CA research (e.g. Heritage & Atkinson, 1984). In Gail Jefferson’s conventions, words are freely transcribed according to their pronounced form: For example “with” can be seen transcribed as “wih”,
presumably because the transcriber has not observed any dental occlusion at the end of
2 Free to download at http://www.lat-mpi.eu/tools/elan/
3 Praat is a widely used software within phonetic research. It is free to download at http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
51 the word. In my view, a transcription is more consistent, and also easier to read if it gives orthographic forms of words, rather than the mix of phonetic and orthographic forms found in Jeffersonian transcription (see Walker, 2004b, pp. 38-43, for a further discussion). This was one reason for using GAT2. Another reason was that GAT2 provides some conventions for representing prosodic features, which are more compatible with linguistic/phonetic representations, than other transcription conventions used in interactional research. In this thesis conventions for indicating prominence, intonation, speech rate, and loudness are used.
As has been noted in previous CA research (e.g. Walker, 2004b), an issue with including additional elements in the transcriptions is that it assigns analytic relevance to some phonetic/linguistic detail and not others. However, this is not seen as a major problem in this thesis. Prosodic information was included in the transcriptions to give the reader some further idea of how the talk was produced, even if the data are not accessible to them; the reader should in any case be aware that a transcription does not do full justice to the details of the data, and that he/she should consult the recordings to further access them.
The inclusion of prominence and intonation was done consistently throughout. Because transcription of other phonetic features, e.g. speech rate, loudness, and voice quality, might negatively affect the readability of the transcripts, these were only provided in cases where it was meant to support the analysis.
A summary of the transcription codes are given below:
Sequence of turns
[ ] Overlaps between turns. Left bracket – start of overlap, right bracket – end of overlap
= Latching, between the end of one turn and the beginning of a next, or connecting two lines that contain the same TCU
Breathing
°h / h° In-breaths and out-breaths respectively, 0.2-0.5 sec °hh / hh° In-breaths and out-breaths respectively, 0.5-0.8 sec °hhh / hhh° In-breaths and out-breaths respectively, 0.8-1.0 sec
Pauses
52 (-) Short pause, 0.2-0.5 sec
(--) Medium pause, 0.5-0.8 sec (---) Longer pause, 0.8-1.0 sec
(1.0) Longer pauses indicated by seconds
Durations
: Prolongation of sound/syllable, 0.2-0.5 sec :: Prolongation of sound/syllable, 0.5-0.8 sec ::: Prolongation of sound/syllable, 0.8-1.0 sec
Accents/prominence
acCENT Accented syllable in capital letters ac´CENT Rising pitch contour
ac`CENT Falling pitch contour ac¯CENT Level pitch contour acˇCENT Falling-rising contour acˆCENT Rising-falling contour
Turn-final pitch movement
? Rise to high , Rise to mid - Level ; Fall to middle . Fall to low Other conventions ˀ Glottalisation ↑ Pitch step-up ↓ Pitch step-down
((head-move)) Non-verbal/non-spoken productions or events (yes) Candidate hearing
(he/you) Possible candidates
<<p >word > Describing loudness, speech rate and voice quality, and indicates where it starts (<< >) and ends (>). Codes: p – piano, pp –
pianissimo, f – forte, ff - fortissimo, all – fast, lento – slow
The transcription of breathing, pauses and prolongations of speech sounds were done quantitatively (but are not strictly accurate) in the software. Other labels, e.g. pitch and prominence, were determined based on impressionistic listening, relative to
surrounding syllables and speech elements. Prominence (capital letters) was assigned to those syllables in the turn that could be categorised as pitch accents in intonational analyses (see e.g. Cruttenden, 1997). The cues to pitch accents are normally based on a combination of duration, pitch and loudness. In Norwegian (and particularly East-
53 Norwegian, which is studied here), one correlate of pitch accent is falling or low pitch, relative to surrounding syllables (see e.g. Kristoffersen, 2000). This is different from for example English, where one correlate of pitch accent is rising or high pitch. Extra IPA symbols were used in connection to particular arguments regarding phonetic
realisations.
An example (3.3) from the transcript of the Norwegian material will be used to further illustrate the conventions used.
(3.3) KTH-NO, AO, 07:50, ”befinne seg”
01 O: jeg har til og med gått (i/eh) `TRE år på: I HAVE TO AND WITH GONE (IN) THREE YEARS ON I have even gone three years for
02 konversa`SJONskurser her i [`STock]´holm, CONVERSATION-COURSES HERE IN name
conversation course here in Stockholm
03 A: [mm; ]
mm 04 O: og [det er] eh: (f)
AND IT IS (STILL) and it’s uh (s-)
05 A: [mm, ]
mm
06 O: `FORT´satt `VANskelig å (.) [°h ] uttrykke seg STILL DIFFICULT TO EXPRESS refl.pron still difficult to (.) °h express myself
07 A: [ja,]
YES
yes 08 O: [`FLYtend↑e] `altså; h°
FLUENTLY THUS fluently you see 09 A: [°hh ]
°hh
All examples are headed with (i) transcript number (i.e. [chapter].[transcript]), (ii) corpus title, (iii) name of recording (for KTH-NO these are based on the initials of participants), (iv) time tag, and (v) name tag.
54 As far as possible, each speaker turn is assigned a line, numbered to the left. However, as is shown in example 3.3, a speaker turn sometimes extends more than one line. The relevant speaker is indicated to the left, following the line number. If there is no name- initial, this means that the speaker from the previous line continues (cf. line 02).
Each line in the transcription is separated with a paragraph, and in each line the Norwegian transcription is given first, followed by a translation gloss (capital letters) and a pragmatic translation (italics) to English. The translation gloss is carefully aligned with the associated word in Norwegian, but this is not done for the pragmatic
translation. The translation gloss gives a word-by-word translation, with morpho- syntactic elements embedded in the translation: e.g. “språk” (singular) is glossed as LANGUAGE, whereas “språk” (plural) is glossed as LANGUAGES. In cases where a word in Norwegian does not have a direct translation in English, grammatical tags in lower case letters were used. See for example “seg” – ‘refl.pron’ (reflexive pronoun) in line 06 (a further list of such tags is given in Appendix B). Further, a potential translation is given in brackets ‘( )’ when a word is not fully produced (see (STILL) in 04).