Across a range of institutional settings, ‘practitioners’ and ‘professionals’ are eliciting and capturing spoken talk from ‘clients’ (Sarangi 1998), transcribing that talk, and later repurposing the transcripts in place of the original interaction. This Research Topic seeks both to shed light on this often overlooked institutional process, and to encourage further linguistic input into this area of professional practice.
Transcription is almost always an institutional practice (Park & Bucholtz 2009), providing a written record of spoken interaction to be used by another party at a later date, in another setting or context. There are a number of underappreciated features and consequences of this transformational process, which we hope this Research Topic will expose and examine.
A primary concern relates to the quality and accuracy of transcription. It is important to acknowledge that written records, and hence transcripts, are necessary. However, it is equally important to start from the premise that no transcript of spoken interaction can be exact. When transcribing spoken talk to produce a written text, transcripts are only ever a representation of the spoken talk and never direct copies, and they inevitably result in a loss of detail. A key issue is the extent to which this basic premise is even recognised within institutions’ practices and procedures (Haworth 2018), which in turn gives rise to questions concerning which features and dimensions of that detail should and could be preserved, and how, and whether there is a need for flexibility and variation depending on the purpose or function the record of spoken interaction is serving.
A second issue centers on the inequalities of control and ownership that exist within the process of transcription. Almost without exception, power over how the talk is captured, how the transcript is produced, and how and which parts of the talk are later repurposed and to what end, rests solely with the institution. By contrast, once the lay participant has engaged in the initial interaction they are almost completely excluded from the trajectory that their data subsequently takes. Whilst professionals are empowered by this process, lay participants are very much disempowered.
These central issues run throughout all aspects of the transcription process, although they manifest in different ways along the route. We hope that submissions will build on the findings of existing studies which have predominantly focused on legal contexts (Heffer, Rock & Conley 2013), and provide a broader picture of practices and procedures across a variety of different setting, perhaps touching on (1) the purpose an official record will serve, (2) whether this purpose is equally explicit for all parties involved, (3) the methods by which the talk is captured, (4) how (and by whom) the transcript is produced, and according to what guidelines, and (5) the role or function the transcript will have when it is later repurposed.
This Research Topic has already received expressions of interest from 16 authors, with proposed paper titles including
• "Specifying challenges in transcribing covert recordings: Implications for forensic transcription."
• "Doing the organization’s work: Transcription for all practical governmental purposes."
• "'Mind the gap:' Bridging the gap between speech and writing in transcribed police interview records."
• "Do police record styles influence judgments?"
• "A framework for deciding how to create and evaluate transcripts for forensic and other purposes."
• "Does Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) have a role in the transcription of indistinct covert recordings for forensic purposes?"
• "Written representation of spoken interaction in the official parliamentary transcripts of the Finnish parliament."
• "Production of written records of spoken interaction: A mini review."
• "From verbal interview to written evidence: Do statements generated by officers accurately represent verbal accounts provided by witnesses?"
• "Institutional and academic transcripts of police interrogations."
• "Transcriptions and translations of covert recordings for police investigations, and their use as evidence in court."
Across a range of institutional settings, ‘practitioners’ and ‘professionals’ are eliciting and capturing spoken talk from ‘clients’ (Sarangi 1998), transcribing that talk, and later repurposing the transcripts in place of the original interaction. This Research Topic seeks both to shed light on this often overlooked institutional process, and to encourage further linguistic input into this area of professional practice.
Transcription is almost always an institutional practice (Park & Bucholtz 2009), providing a written record of spoken interaction to be used by another party at a later date, in another setting or context. There are a number of underappreciated features and consequences of this transformational process, which we hope this Research Topic will expose and examine.
A primary concern relates to the quality and accuracy of transcription. It is important to acknowledge that written records, and hence transcripts, are necessary. However, it is equally important to start from the premise that no transcript of spoken interaction can be exact. When transcribing spoken talk to produce a written text, transcripts are only ever a representation of the spoken talk and never direct copies, and they inevitably result in a loss of detail. A key issue is the extent to which this basic premise is even recognised within institutions’ practices and procedures (Haworth 2018), which in turn gives rise to questions concerning which features and dimensions of that detail should and could be preserved, and how, and whether there is a need for flexibility and variation depending on the purpose or function the record of spoken interaction is serving.
A second issue centers on the inequalities of control and ownership that exist within the process of transcription. Almost without exception, power over how the talk is captured, how the transcript is produced, and how and which parts of the talk are later repurposed and to what end, rests solely with the institution. By contrast, once the lay participant has engaged in the initial interaction they are almost completely excluded from the trajectory that their data subsequently takes. Whilst professionals are empowered by this process, lay participants are very much disempowered.
These central issues run throughout all aspects of the transcription process, although they manifest in different ways along the route. We hope that submissions will build on the findings of existing studies which have predominantly focused on legal contexts (Heffer, Rock & Conley 2013), and provide a broader picture of practices and procedures across a variety of different setting, perhaps touching on (1) the purpose an official record will serve, (2) whether this purpose is equally explicit for all parties involved, (3) the methods by which the talk is captured, (4) how (and by whom) the transcript is produced, and according to what guidelines, and (5) the role or function the transcript will have when it is later repurposed.
This Research Topic has already received expressions of interest from 16 authors, with proposed paper titles including
• "Specifying challenges in transcribing covert recordings: Implications for forensic transcription."
• "Doing the organization’s work: Transcription for all practical governmental purposes."
• "'Mind the gap:' Bridging the gap between speech and writing in transcribed police interview records."
• "Do police record styles influence judgments?"
• "A framework for deciding how to create and evaluate transcripts for forensic and other purposes."
• "Does Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) have a role in the transcription of indistinct covert recordings for forensic purposes?"
• "Written representation of spoken interaction in the official parliamentary transcripts of the Finnish parliament."
• "Production of written records of spoken interaction: A mini review."
• "From verbal interview to written evidence: Do statements generated by officers accurately represent verbal accounts provided by witnesses?"
• "Institutional and academic transcripts of police interrogations."
• "Transcriptions and translations of covert recordings for police investigations, and their use as evidence in court."