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Talking Data

Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research

• Edited by Jane A. Edwards, Martin D. Lampert

• Price: $49.95
• Binding: Paperback (also available in Hardback)
• Pages: 336
• Published by: Psychology Press
• Publication Date: 1st April 1993
• ISBN: 978-0-8058-0349-5

About the Book

This book presents the reader with a set of diverse, carefully developed and clearly specified systems of transcription and coding, arising from contrasting theoretical perspectives, and presented as alternative choices, situated within the theoretical domain most natural to each. The perspectives represented include first and second language acquisition, interethnic and crosscultural interaction, information structure, and the study of discourse influences on linguistic expression.

In the contributed chapters, the designers of these systems provide a distillation of collective experiences from the past quarter century, telling in their own words their perspectives on language processes, how these perspectives have shaped their choice of methodology in transcription and coding of natural language, and describing their systems in detail. Overview chapters by the editors then provide design principles and guidelines concerning issues pertinent to all systems, including such things as reliability, validity, ease of learning, computational tractability, and robustness against error. The final chapter is a compendium of existing computerized archives of language data and information sources together with details concerning data access and use.

Table of Contents

Contents: Part I:Transcription. J.A. Edwards, Principles and Contrasting Systems of Discourse Transcription. W.L. Chafe, Prosodic and Functional Units of Language. J.W. Du Bois, S. Schuetze-Coburn, S. Cumming, D. Paolino, Outline of Discourse Transcription. J.J. Gumperz, N. Berenz, Transcribing Conversational Exchanges. K. Ehlich, HIAT: A Transcription System for Discourse Data. L. Bloom, Transcription and Coding for Child Language Research: The Parts are More Than the Whole. Part II:Coding. M.D. Lampert, S.M. Ervin-Tripp, Structured Coding for the Study of Language and Social Interaction. D.I. Slobin, Coding Child Language Data for Crosslinguistic Analysis. J.W. Du Bois, S. Schuetze-Coburn, Representing Hierarchy: Constituent Structure for Discourse Databases. Part III:Resources. J.A. Edwards, Survey of Electronic Corpora and Related Resources for Language Researchers.