Monday 7 December 2009

9-1 -- 9-4 Transcription (Polly, Emma, Jacob)

Dear all,

we need to confirm our labelling of voices in recording 9-1 -- 9--4.

At present I have labelled the voices in order they initially spoke. 'A' and 'B' for the female students and 'C' for the male student. In my recording (9-3) there seems to be a dominant voice: female 'A', thereby distinguishes her from the other female voice. So how, as group, would we like to label the voices?

P.S: thank you to the students in my recording for speaking so clearly and succinctly; it made my task of transcribing much easier. On the other hand, I'll like to apologise to those who had the task of transcribing (translating) my voice!

P.P.S Has anyone seen Francis Coppola's film, The Conversation? Gene Hackman plays a surveillance expert who eavesdrops on a young couple's mid-day tete-a-tete. Though he merely records (rather than transcribes) he becomes obsessed (among other things) with his subject's utterance 'he'd kill us if he had the chance'. It implies that the young couple are engaged in an adulterous affair and the cuckold husband would punished the couple, if not kill them. However, the utterance's meaning is determined by the intonation/emphasis, which Gene Hackman only realises towards the end (exacerbating his already tenuous hold on reality). The utterance with the intonation is 'he'd kill us if he had the chance' implicating the couple with the murder of the cuckold husband. The film, thus, demonstrates the elusiveness of meaning and the attempts we make to anchor meaning to an empirical reality. (Check Antonioni's Blow-up which inspired the film.)

Monday 16 November 2009

FREDA Week 8
Discussion of Elinor Och’s text: “Transcription as Theory”
We discussed how selectivity can alter the perception of an interaction and the conclusions drawn from it. A key quote from the reading is: “a more useful transcript is a more selective one”. This then led us to consider the effects of omitting certain non-verbal elements from our transcription and how their potential inclusion would alter the conclusions drawn about their role in discourse and their importance in the specific transcription. We continued to question how our group recording would be affected by these ideas and how a transcription would capture effectively what the interlocutors considered memorable and how different a transcription will be.

Wednesday 14 October 2009

Reminder

Please feel free to post on this blog. Any comments about the readings, the group work, the assignment, feedback, anything. This blog is meant as a general discussion forum...

Thursday 8 October 2009

Reading for week 3

Oliver,
Is there any reading we need to do ready for the seminar in week 3, as you did not mention any in the seminar this week? Thanks.

Monday 5 October 2009

Podcast week 2

On the course blog you can now find the first podcast. (From now on I won't post a notice on this blog, as I assume you're all reading the course blog anyway!)

Friday 2 October 2009

Group Meeting/Email Confusion

Problem with email; the address for group coordinator Joe McNamara (joemcnamara@googlemail.com) belongs to a Joe McNamara in Ohio!

Attempted to email you regarding group meeting before next seminar. Oliver Mason suggested Fridays, Mondays, Tuesdays. Monday I have lecture, etc, from 2:00-3:30; Tuesday I'm available after 2:30.

Regards - James.

Thursday 1 October 2009

Reading for week 2

In case I have forgotten to mention it in a seminar, the reading for next week is the first chapter of Stubbs (1983) "Discourse Analysis". A copy is available on WebCT in the 'Texts' folder.

Please remember to post any comments, queries, summaries, discussion items, whatever on this blog!