Transcription
Arienne Dwyer
Tsuyoshi Ono
Course Information
Transcription (interpretive written renderings of language) is an important skill in language documentation and revitalization, as it allows a reader to systematize and make sense of the flow of connected speech. Transcription systems exist for different purposes; this workshop first surveys a range of useful transcription methods, weighing their ease of use and precision for various tasks; then we focus on two broadly useful methods, discourse transcription (Santa Barbara style, which is similar to Conversation Analysis) and phonetic transcription (especially the International Phonetic Alphabet, but also including SAMPA, XSAMPA, and the Americanist and Europeanist traditions).
Each day of the workshop includes hands-on practice in transcription methods, and we will weigh the pros and cons of particular transcription systems for participants’ projects. In exploring appropriate transcription systems for particular projects, both practical and political factors are considered (Is the purpose of transcription to create authentic teaching materials? To analyze sound systems? Or interaction? What are the views of the community? Of academics?) This course also provides an opportunity for transcriptionists experienced in one method to try another.
Relevant Links
IPA chart (http://www.sil.org/computing/ipahelp/index.htm)
IPA Help software (http://www.sil.org/computing/ipahelp/index.htm)
SAMPA web link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMPA_chart)
Instructor(s) Bio
Arienne M. Dwyer (Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas; Organizing Committee and taught for InField 2008) is Associate Professor of Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Kansas, with formal affiliations in Linguistics and Indigenous Nations Studies. She has conducted 20 years of fieldwork on Turkic-Mongolic-Sinitic-Tibetic language contact in Inner and Central Asia and has directed a number of cooperative documentation and archiving projects. Internationally she acts as a consultant on endangered language documentation and multimedia annotation and archiving: International Metadata Initiative (IMDI), 2000; UNESCO Ad hoc Endangered Language Committee Co-chair, 2001- 2002; Electronic Metastructures in Endangered Language Data (EMELD), 2001-2006.
Yoshi Ono (Associate Professor in East Asian Studies at the University of Alberta.) is a specialist in Japanese conversation and grammar. Since 2006, he has been doing fieldwork on the Ikema dialect of the Miyako language spoken on three Japanese islands near Taiwan. He also directs the Spoken Discourse Research Studio at Alberta.