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The decision on quantity of data was primarily to provide a corpus of
conversation which would be both substantial yet manageable. Details of the
total hours of data recorded are provided in table 4.2
Table 4.2 Total Conversational Data Recorded
English
Gatherings
German
Gatherings
Total Length of Recordings 28 hrs 48 hrs
I should make some reference here to the apparent incongruity between
the volume of data recorded in English as compared to German settings.
Although total lengths of recordings in the German data is 20 hours more than
the English recordings, this did not result in a similar disparity in the amount of
conversation actually recorded. The difference in recording times was largely
due to the fact that, in the German gatherings, the recorder was essentially 'left
on' throughout the entire gathering, whereas in English gatherings, the recorder
was often turned off when conversation was replaced by some other in situ
activity. Thus, in the German corpus this subsequently led to extended periods
being recorded where no useable talk was recorded - for example when
participants were eating, or if and when they left the table and moved for
instance around the garden. That aside, the quantitative aspects of this study
are secondary to the qualitative ones, and I would therefore see no real issue in
the question of how long the recorder was actually turned on, only how much
useable data the recordings actually yielded.
Near the start of each gathering, the tape recorder was turned on. This
was then kept running for as long as practically possible. As a result, shorter
gatherings were recorded almost in their entirety, whilst the longer gatherings
yielded continuous conversational data of several hours in length. The majority
of the recordings omitted the very beginning and ending of most of the
gatherings. For these 'greeting' phases of the gatherings (see 5.1), participant
observation was the main method of data collection. This type of 'blanket
recording' proved useful on two main counts. First, it provided me with
1 or,