Transcription conventions

Main Conventions:

(.)

micropause (comparable perhaps to an average syllable duration) <0.5 sec

(..)

brief pause >0.5 s <1.0 s

(…)

pause >1.0 s <1.5 s

(2.0)

longer pause in seconds

//

point at which the current utterance is overlapped by that transcribed below

*

asterisks indicate the alignment of the points where overlap ceases

CAPS

relatively high volume

((CAPS))

analytical labels

::

lengthened syllables or speech sounds

–

glottal stop, self editing marker

= =

latched utterances, with no gap

?

not a punctuation mark but a rising intonation contour

(( ))

used to indicate some phenomenon that the transcriber does not want to struggle with or some non vocal action

( )

uncertain passages of transcript

à

draws attention to location of phenomenon of direct interest to discussion

hh

indicates an audible out-breath

.hh

indicates an audible in breath

Supplementary Conventions:

Capital letters are not used except for proper nouns (e.g. Sunday, Graham), the 1st person pronoun, I (e.g. where should I go), and for indicating relatively high volume and analytical labels as set out above.

Punctuation marks are not used, with the exception of the apostrophe (e.g. Baljeet’s; you’ve; they’ll).

Line numbers in transcription extracts are referred to using the notation Lx, where L stands for ‘line’ and x is the relevant number. Thus, L01 refers to line number one and L25 refers to line number twenty-five, and so on.