English Language Teaching in its Social Context

334 JOAN SWANNIn a column transcript, it’s important to bcar in mind which column you allocate toeach speaker. Because of factors such as the left-right orientation in European scripts,and associated conventions of page layout, we may give priority to information locatedon the left hand side. Ochs (1 979) points out that, in column transcripts of adult-childtalk, the adult is nearly always allocated thc left-hand column, suggesting they are theinitiator of thc conversation. In Figure 20.4 1 began with Girl 1, probably because shespoke first, but I also groupcd thc girls and thcn the boys togethcr.This may be usefulif your interest is, say, in gender issucs, but it’s important to considcr why you arcadopting a particular order and not to regard this as, somehow, ‘natural’.Accounts of convcrsational turn-taking havc oftcn assumcd that onc person talks at a timc(e.g. Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson, 1974). As I suggested above, however, this is not alwaysthe case, particularly in young children’s talk, or in more informal discussion where thereis lots of ovcrlapping talk and whcrc spcakcrs frcqucntly complctc one another’s turns. Inher analysis of informal talk amongst women fricnds, Jcnnifcr Coatcs dcvcloped a methodof transcription in which she used a ‘stave’ layout (by analogy with musical staves) torepresent the joint construction of speaking turns (see, for instance, Coates, 1996). Stavctranscription has not been used frequently in educational contexts but may be adopted toillustrate highly collaborative talk in small groups. Figure 20.5 comes from a study madeby Julia Davies (2000) of English lcssons in thrcc sccondary schools in Sheffield, in the northof England. Davics was particularly interested in gender issues ~ in how girls and boysworked together in single-sex and mixed-sex groups. Figurc 20.5 shows a group of fourteenage girls reflecting on their earlier cxpcricnccs of school. Davies found (like Coates)that the girls’ talk was particularly collaborative (e.g. it contained overlapping specch, jointconstruction of turns and several indicators of conversational support).Thc layout you choose for a transcript will depend on what you arc transcribing andwhy. Here I have tried to show how different layouts highlight certain aspects of talk andplay down others.You will need to try out, and probably adapt, layouts till you find one thatsuits your purposes ~ bearing in mind, as ever, that such dccisions are already leading youtowards a particular interpretation of your data.Including nonverbal and contextual informationTranscriptions tend to highlight verbal information, though I have indicated above hownonverbal information can be shown in a ‘notes’ column, or by typographical conventionssuch as capital letters for emphasis or loudncss. In some chapters of this book authors usediffcrcnt conventions. Pauline Gibbons and Angel Lin, for instance (Chapters 16 and 17respectively) include some nonverbal information within brackets in the dialogue. If youare particularly interested in nonverbal information you may wish to adopt transcriptionconventions that highlight this in somc way. As examples, Figure 20.6 shows how a storytelleruses a number of nonverbal features in her performance of a Nigerian story (‘A manamongst men’); and Figure 20.7 shows how a teacher uses gaze to nominate female or malestudents to respond to her questions.Representing dineren t language varietiesThe transcripts of classroom talk I have illustrated so far come from contexts in whichEnglish is being used as a medium of instruction. In many contexts, however, even whcrcEnglish is used as a classroom language, teachers and students may also usc another language,