Announcing 'Stammering Research' - Stammering Research - UCL

Stammering Research. Vol. 1.
conversation analytic research, impacting upon a wide range of substantive topics across a variety of
disciplines. Rather than attempt to summarise this diverse body of work it may be more profitable to
turn our attention to some of the practical aspects of data transcription.
Transcription
As the emphasis in conversational analysis is on the structure rather than the content of talk, the
transcription system 12 used by researchers in this field is fundamentally different from that associated
with other forms of data analysis. Like all transcription systems it is inevitably selective, and the main
concern has been to capture the sequential features of talk-in-interaction. The development of such a
system has emerged progressively over the last four decades, primarily through the efforts of Gail
Jefferson. Transcription not only makes the data more amenable for analysis, but also represents an
important stage in the analytic process itself (West & Zimmerman 1982:515). Indeed it is through the
process of transcribing the data that the analyst begins to apprehend the underlying structural and
organisational characteristics of the interaction. Fundamental as this process may be, it is nevertheless
important to remember that it is the original recordings that constitute the data. The transcripts merely
facilitate the process of analysis and serve to make the findings available to a wider audience.
Moreover, as Paul ten Have (1999:77) points out, they are ‘selective “theory-laden” renderings of
certain aspects of what the tape has preserved of the original interaction, produced with a particular
purpose in mind, by this particular transcriptionist, with his or her special abilities and limitations’. In
practice, therefore, most analysts tend to work with the recordings and the transcriptions alongside one
another.
For those unfamiliar with the Jeffersonian transcription system it can appear opaque and
disconcerting. Pauses, silences, overlapping talk, applause, laughter, pitch and volume are just some of
the features that are transcribed in an attempt to capture not only the content of the talk, but also the
way in which it is produced. The key features of a recording are rarely apparent the first time it is
played and the analytic process therefore involves repeated listening to the original tape recordings in
order to become familiar with the complexities of the interaction. The emergence of relatively cheap
video-recording technology has enabled researchers to incorporate non-verbal behaviours into their
analysis, and while this form of conversation analysis is growing, visual data has generally been used
to supplement audio analysis. A nonverbal notation system 13 has also been developed and the strategy
usually adopted involves adding the relevant non-verbal information (direction of gaze, posture,
pointing and so on) to the audio transcriptions.
Although it is impossible, in this introductory summary, to fully convey the breadth of research
currently being carried out under the rubric of conversation analysis, it is important to highlight the
extent to which conversation analysis has developed our knowledge about the natural organisation of
social interaction through the continual incorporation of new research topics and issues. The real and
permanent gains that have materialised over the last four decades of research give substance to
Psathas's (1995: 68) assertion that 'the study of talk-in-interaction brings more than a promise....it has
now achieved a demonstrable record of rigorous, systematic, replicable, and cumulative studies'. In
many ways, the strength of conversation analysis lies in its ability to bring a fresh approach to wellresearched
topics and to illuminate issues that previous researchers have been unable to access.
However, despite the diversified nature of recent conversation analytic research, work still continues
into the 'basic' mechanisms of conversational organisation and it is these studies which hold the
greatest significance for the analysis of stammering.
3. Conversation analysis and ‘disorders’ of communication
Before considering the potential benefits of a conversation analytic approach to stammering it may be
productive to examine a number studies have been carried on other groups or individuals who experience
communication difficulties. While the specific focus of this research is in certain respects marginal to the
issue of stammering, the broader methodological concerns of the individual projects have more general
application. It also important to emphasize that the studies outlined below represent only a tiny fraction of
the conversation analytic work currently being carried out in these areas.
Considerable research has been carried out into the language and communicative abilities of mentally
handicapped children and adults, some of which suggests that these skills have been seriously underestimated.
One such study is that of Peskett and Wootton (1985) and in concentrating on the speech of
young Down's Syndrome children, they seek to draw comparisons with the conversational skills of non-
12 There are a number of accessible introductory discussions on the transcription procedure of
conversation analysis. See, for example, Psathas and Anderson (1990); Hutchby and Wooffitt (1998),
Chapter 3; and ten Have (1999) Chapter 5.
13 See Goodwin (1981: 51-53); Heath (1986: xi-xvi); and Heath (1997) for some illustrations of the
transcription of nonverbal activities.
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