Some Effects of Transcribers on Data in Dialectology

Abstract

The transcription of speech into a graphic code is a basic procedure in both dialectology and sociolinguistics, and typically, it is this graphic analog of speech that forms the data for analysis in both disciplines. The act of transcription, however, affects linguistic data in subtle, difficult-to-detect ways. This paper demonstrates some of those effects by examining impressionistic phonetic data in American linguistic atlases. The paper identifies three sources of transcriber effects in the data:(1) conceptual differences regarding the phonetic status of particular sounds (e.g., offglides of diphthongs) and how they should be transcribed, (2) normative differences regarding the phonetic values of particular symbols, and (3) changing scribal practices as transcribers discover the importance of phonetic details that they had previously overlooked. When transcriber effects such as these are not identified and accounted for in the analysis of the data, they can create misleading results. This paper explores the effects that transcribers can have on data in dialectology and sociolinguistics. It does so by examining some of the effects that different scribal practices and norms of transcribers for the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS) and the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) had on data in those atlases. While the focus here is on phonetic transcription, the primary tool for reducing speech to writing in linguistic atlases, the implications of the study go beyond phonetic transcription. As Luebs (1996) has shown, scribal practices and norms affect orthographic transcription and the data resulting from it as well (see also Bailey, Maynor, and Cukor-Avila 1991).Transcriber effects can potentially create misleading results. As we show below, transcriber effects in the LAMSAS and LAGS data do in fact create some misleading results. 1 At the same time, the disaggregated nature of linguistic atlas data and the transparency of atlas procedures can help researchers identify and resolve transcriber effects. If transcriber (and other researcher) effects are inevitable at some level, they can at least be factored into the analysis of data when individual tokens can be traced to particular interviews, field-workers, and transcribers. If the effects are not to be mistaken for substantive results, researchers must be alert to them as a normal American SpeechPublished by Duke University Press

Variation in transcription

“…Perhaps unsurprisingly, sociocultural linguistic research has given some of the earliest and most extensive scholarly scrutiny to the topic, from concerns with the phonetic representation of dialectal features in dialectology and sociolinguistics (e.g. Bailey, 1986;Bailey et al, 2005;Macaulay, 1991;Miethaner, 2000) to wide-ranging explorations of the representation of interactional detail in discourse analysis (e.g. Edwards and Lampert, 1993;Flewitt, 2006;Norris, 2002; new functions as it enters new contexts of use.…”

Revisiting berdache

“…The feature is attested in data from the two major North American linguistic atlas works that cover the American South, LAGS and LAMSAS, as responses to an elicitation question designed to capture might could, but also as responses to direct questions about the informant's typical speech and to questions about the typical speech of persons in the locality in which the interview was conducted, as well as, in some cases, spontaneous production of a double modal in conversation (Montgomery 1998;Bailey and Tillery 1999;Tillery 2000). 7 The worksheets used for LAMSAS and LAGS interviews included an item designed to elicit or suggest might could: "Suggesting possibility of being able to do something, you say, 'I'm not sure, but I ___.'…”

Clearing the Transcription Hurdle in Dialect Corpus Building: The Corpus of Southern Dutch Dialects as Case Study

“…However, manual phonetic transcriptions are—more than other types of transcriptions—very sensitive to transcriber effects, and hence pose a problem for transcript consistency. Bailey et al ( 2005 ) discuss how, even after careful phonetic training of transcribers, the phonetic transcriptions needed for the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS) and the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) were clearly subject to transcriber effects, due to “(1) conceptual differences regarding the phonetic status of particular sounds (e.g., offglides of diphthongs) and how they should be transcribed, (2) normative differences regarding the phonetic values of particular symbols, and (3) changing scribal practices as transcribers discover the importance of phonetic details that they had previously overlooked” (Bailey et al, 2005 , 3). Phonetic transcription is also much more time- and hence also budget-consuming than orthographic transcription.…”