The Myth of the Objective Transcript: Transcribing as a Situated Act

* Transcribing is a tool commonly used by researchers, both those concerned with the study of language and those concerned with exploring other dimensions of everyday life through language. Underlying much of this work is the belief that it is possible to write talk down in an objective way. In this commentary, we argue that transcribing is a situated act within a study or program of research embedded in a conceptual ecology of a discipline (Green et al., 1996; Toulmin, 1990; Van Dijk, 1985a). Transcribing, therefore, is a political act that reflects a discipline's conventions as well as a researcher's conceptualization of a phenomenon, purposes for the research, theories guiding the data collection and analysis, and programmatic goals (Edwards, 1993; Ochs, 1979). Our own political act in writing this article is to construct the arguments that follow by drawing on sociolinguistic perspectives informed by cultural anthropology (Green Green it is not the event itself. Following this logic, what is re-presented is data constructed by a researcher for a particular purpose, not just talk written down.