This is a really great topic and I may jump into again later when I have more time - for the moment I would just like to point out a fantastic new paper by Anja Kanngiesser in Progress in Human Geography. It is one of the few journal articles I am aware of that actually has audio files attached to it. It is, in my opinion, an incredibly effective format.

http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/11/08/0309132511423969.abstract

   -Brad
__________________________________
Bradley L. Garrett
PhD Candidate
Department of Geography
Royal Holloway, University of London
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On 1 Dec 2011, at 17:51, Adefemi Kingsley Adekunle wrote:

Have to agree with these points.  I am in the middle of a 'soul destroying
bout' of transcription and beginning to think that transcribing doesn’t
always capture the ‘vocabulary of the voice’ – pitch (high, medium or low
sounds); pace (fast or slow); power (volume); inflection (the rise and
fall of the voice); pauses; emphasis, diction or resonance.  All of this
is possible to record but is are not readily available on the page and
with it, the banal everyday micro-calculations implicit within dialogue
are still ‘hidden’ despite the need to convert speech to written word:
into data for analysis.

Philip commentated about how the use of technology - mp3 had meant that
some of this was now not so hidden but I would go further.  We are
supposed to be in the Youtube generation so why not use audio-visual
transcripts?  Although there are issues of confidentiality to overcome, I
have seen programs that can deal with this.  I suppose it would make a
monograph redundant but it is interesting that technology seems to have
run ahead of certain academic practices.  Really good article summarises
this point:

Beyond transcription: technology, change and Refinement of Method
D. Thomas Markle, Richard E. West and Peter J. Rich.
Forum: qualitative research, Volume 12, no. 3, Art 21 September 2011

Pam's comment raises issues I too have long been thinking about. While I
definitely believe that some types of research and some bodies of data
benefit from transcription, I do fully believe that "the tyranny of
transcribing" is a received practice we do not question enough. Besides
the "soul destruction" (a bit harsh, but still funny!) and the time
consumption of transcription, I think its dangers come from its
unchallenged ocularcentricism (i.e. why is seeing data better than hearing
data?) and from the way transcription into written text flattens the grain
of informants' voice, as well as the way if often results in suffocating
dialogue between us and them, and in silencing the soundscape of the
places where interviews were conducted.

Yes, I do understand the need to protect informants' identity, but often
informants themselves do not care to be anonymous. Indeed for some
research projects they ask/prefer to be recognized for their contribution
to a research project. They often want to see/hear themselves in our
research.

For what it's worth as a contribution to the discussion, lately I've
started to make it a point of making high-quality digital recordings of
all my interviews. These .wav or .mp3 files can be easily downloaded into
an mp3 player and can be listened to again and again... on the drive to
work, during a walk in the park or the beach, etc. Listening again (and
again), I feel, can be just as insightful as transcribing and visually
coding. And one can always code sound files too.

In fact, sound files these can easily be clipped, copied, pasted, etc.
Indeed my "data analysis folders" on my computer these days are full of
these mp3 files. Using free software like "Audacity" I can do these things
without knowing anything about sound production. And websites like
soundcloud.com allow us to make notes on shared files, distribute them
widely, etc.

One last thing: having sound clips of interviews (with prior consent of
informants, obviously) allows us to create hyperlinks from these files
directly from our papers and books. That way, instead of reading an
excerpt a reader can simply follow a hyperlink and listen to the sound
file uploaded on soundcloud. At no cost or hassle to the journal. This of
course presumes hat we read our papers online, rather than in paper, but
in my experience that's what a lot of readers do these days anyway.
Readers of the paper version can always be provided a URL as a footnote.
Now, I don't do these for every quote, but only for the longer ones. I've
nicknamed them digital soundnotes : )  Hypermedia book series the one I'm
editing for Routledge, "Innovative Ethnographies," allow for the creation
of multimodal research too. If you're jonesing for an example see
ferrytales.innovativeethnographies.net

Sorry for the long post--I'm a geek about these things. And like I said,
it doesn't work but every project, but it can sure work for some.

Phillip Vannini
Professor and Canada Research Chair
(Innovative Learning and Public Ethnography)
www.publicethnography.net <http://www.publicethnography.net/>
School of Communication and Culture
Royal Roads University


________________________________

From: A forum for critical and radical geographers on behalf of Pamela
Shurmer-Smith
Sent: Thu 01/12/2011 3:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Transcribers


This probably isn't very helpful to you, Christopher, but I think it is
high time we challenged the tyranny of transcribing.  It is time consuming
and soul destroying.



There's no reason I can see these days always to render the spoken into
the written. There is ample storage space on anyone's computer for heaps
of interviews in the original and that original retains all the
intonation, the pauses, the clattering of coffee cups ...whatever.



Yes, I know about searching for words/phrases, chunking and coding, but
how many of us are actually doing linguistic analysis when we transcribe?
In my opinion it has become a piece of empty "good practice".



I've gone over to writing guide notes and keeping the original interviews
on iTunes.  (I record with my iPod, which will happily chop material up
into chapters.)

Pam


Dr Pamela Shurmer-Smith
Portsmouth
UK

________________________________

From: Christopher Bear [ckb] <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
Sent: Thursday, 1 December 2011, 7:56
Subject: Transcribers


Dear All,

Would any of you be able to recommend a reliable and reasonably-priced
professional transcriber (suitable for transcribing interviews, focus
groups etc.)? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance,


Chris
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Dr Christopher Bear
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