Transcription tales or let not love's labour be lost

Abstract

Drawing heavily on my MA dissertation but influenced by subsequent transcription experience, I relate how a technical problem in the recording of an interview necessitated deliberations on the nature and purpose of transcription that continue to have repercussions for my transcription practice and, furthermore, for my understanding of research as praxis. I suggest that transcription is a valueladen, ethical as well as a technical undertaking, and that it brings the tension between practical considerations and methodological fidelity into sharp focus. I also highlight the way in which transcripts themselves are simultaneously more and less than they seem. Furthermore, in taking a storied approach to these issues, I provide the reader with clues to my methodological allegiances and my conceptualization of transcription as comprising a set of interpretative, meaningmaking practices. IntroductionIn this paper, I tell tales about what 'happened' the first time I tried to transcribe an interview. While I am mindful of what Sikes (2009) has to say about self-plagiarism, I draw heavily on the chapter I wrote for my dissertation for an MA in educational research at the University of Sheffield. However, it is also steeped in the thoughts and reflections I have engaged in since then and is written by a somewhat more experienced transcriber. My subsequent experience thus inflects my initial experience and vice versa. It is also a story about the fusion of practical considerations (such as constraints of time and finance) with methodological fidelity. I use 'fusion' here consciously because it is difficult to isolate those aspects of decision-making that were purely practical, methodological, or technical, because they are each embedded within the others. I tell of making decisions demanded by unfolding research rather than strict adherence to protocols and I highlight the ethical issues that trail in the wake of that. It is a story of assumptions concealed within practices of a seemingly technical nature; it is a story about how my understanding of transcription was itself transcribed, so that it became an ethical rather than a technical undertaking. I will begin by setting the scene, sketching in those details of my dissertation research that I consider relevant to this transcription tale and setting this within a story about the circumstances in which I was doing the research. I then focus on the transcription tale proper, outlining what I was thinking before I did it and relating how a

Engaging Gadamer and qualia for the mot juste of individualised care

“…Although terms such as procedural steps , stages , or moments are used interchangeably in discussions of the movement from transcript to theme, the path from the research interview to a thematic representation in qualitative research is signposted by common landmarks, or a ‘generic analytic cycle’ (Bendassolli, , p. 7). While many authors would agree with Downs () who suggests, ‘transcripts are the con artists of the research world’ (p. 107), we begin our discussion of the ‘interpretative leaps’ that are implicit in thematically oriented qualitative research in the movement from transcript to theme.…”

Dialoguing with the silent researcher: Rethinking the role of the transcriptionist in qualitative research

“…A meager body of literature exists that considers transcription as theory (e.g. Downs, 2010;Duranti, 2006;Ochs, 1979), but such literature tends to focus on the conscious and subconscious choices that transcriptionists make (such as in the ways the transcriptionist chooses to represent the dialect of a research subject). This literature demonstrates the ways in which transcripts are not the neutral texts we often assume them to be.…”

Exploring student/teacher interactions in Taiwanese buxiban classrooms from the poststructuralist concept of subjectivity

“…As mentioned above, transcribing is commonly recognised as a mission to make a written copy of something (Merriam-Webster, 2018). However, transcribing is not as simple as we think; rather, it is a complicated process in which other issues, such as the validity of the data, the credibility, and the loyalty of the researcher (Flick, 2014) are also involved as Downs (2010) argues that "doing transcription is a story of the assumptions concealed within practices of a seemingly technical nature; a story about how his understanding of transcription was itself transcribed, so that it became an ethical rather than a technical undertaking" (Downs, 2010, p. 101).…”

“…In other words, doing transcription is not just a simple sort of technical practicetranscribe every single word only (Lapadat & Lindsay, 1999). Rather, it is a process in which the validity and credibility of the transcription are challenged as well as the loyalty, emotion, and the faith of researchers are involved (Downs, 2010). The close and deep involvement and connection of researchers in transcribing are made visible through a series of complicated decision-making and selectivity taking place in the process of 'textualisation' in Ricoeur's (1991) term for "the process by which unwritten behavior(s) become fixed, atomized, and classified as data of a certain sort" (p. 95).…”

“…and 'ellipsis' were in the recordings (Downs, 2010). I started wondering if I should 'fill in' the gaps or just leave them as where they were in the recordings.…”