English Language Teaching in its Social Context

RECORDING AND TRANSCRIBING TALI< 343agreement on the correct answer. Wegerif and Mercer point out, however, that suchevidence may not be seen as convincing because it consists only of one or two brief extractsfrom transcripts.As a way of complementing their initial qualitative approach, Wegerif and Mercer useda computerised concordancing program. This identifies all instances of a word or expressionused in a particular set of data, and displays these in their immediate linguistic context. InFigure 20.12 above, for instance, the words 'cos and because are displayed in each speakingturn in which they occurred in one group's interaction before and after the intervention.Wegerif and Mercer suggest that 'cos and because are used differently in the pre- and postinterventioninteraction: in the post-intervention interactions they are more frequently usedto link reasons to claims. Wegerif and Mercer carried out similar analyses of other termsthat might be seen as indicative of reasoning (e.g. fand so used to link a reason to anassertion).This form of analysis provides quantifiable data (i.e. it is possible to calculate thefrequency with which 'cos and because are used in different contexts). It is also possible tosee each instance of 'cos and because in a limited linguistic context, which provides furtherinformation about their use in each case (as in Figure 20.12). And it is possible, for any oneinstance, to display further linguistic context (any number of preceding and followingspeaking turns) to allow a qualitative exploration of the data.If this form of analysis interests you, it is possible to purchase concordancing software(or, in some cases, to download this from the Internet).' You will need, however, to beprepared to spend time exploring the software to see how it can be made to work mosteffectively for your own purposes. For further discussion and examples of corpus-bascdanalysis see, for instance, Stubbs (1 996).ConclusionIn this chapter I have discussed various techniques you can use to record and transcribespoken language. There is no 'ideal' way to do this, and I have tried to indicate the strengthsand weaknesses of different approaches so that you can select the most appropriate method,or combination of methods, for your own purposes. It is beyond the scope of this chapterto consider, at any level of detail, ways of analysing spoken language, though I have suggestedsome initial considerations to bear in mind. Other chapters in this volume include examplesof research on spoken language, and illustrations of different forms of analysis: these mayprovide ideas for your own research.AcknowledgementI am grateful to Rupert Wegerif for suggestions on computer-based methods of analysingspoken language.