自然口语转写通用标准DuBoisDiscourseTrs

3 Outline of Discourse Transcription John W. Du Bois University of California at Santa Barbara Stephan Schuetze-Coburn University of California at Los Angeles Susanna Cumming University of Colorado at Boulder Danae Paolino University of California at Santa Barbara This article presents a set of basic categories, symbols, and conventions for discourse transcription. Discourse transcription can be defined as the process of creating a written representation of a speech event so as to make it accessible to discourse research. In the following pages, we present in outline a framework for carrying out such a discourse transcription. (For a discussion of the principles that underlie the design of transcription systems, see Du Bois, 1991, and Edwards, this volume; for an indepth treatment of the whole Process of discourse transcription, see Du Bois, Schuetze-Cobum, Cumming, & paolino, 199 1 .) For each symbol in this discoucse @anscription system, ,a brief explanation of usage is given, illustrated with an example drawn from conversational transcriptions. Where appropriate, we comment on why the discourse f e a m in question should be attended to. A word about the examples is in order. All examples cited are drawn from actual conversations, which have been transcribed and checked by the autb0rs.l The examples are given in a fairly broad transaiption, which 46 DU BOlS, SCHUETZE-COBURN, CUMMING, AND PAOUNO includes the most basic transcription information: the words and who they were spoken by, the division of the stream of speech into turns and intonation units, the truncation of intonation units and words, intonation contours, medium and long pauses, laughter, and uncertain hearings or indecipherable words. In a more detailed, "narrow" transcription, the transcriber would also include notation of, among other things, accent, tone, prosodic lengtbening, and breathing and other vocal noises. Such narrow transcription features have been omitted from most of the transcriptions in this chapter, so as not to overload the reader with too many new symbols at once; but for those sections that deal directly with the transcription of these features, the examples will include them. (Narrowly transcribed versions of most of the examples cited here are presented in Du Bois et al., 1991.) For brevity's sake, the examples represent for the most part short stretches of discourse without a great deal of textual context (cotext). Thus the portions cited are not always whole sentences or whole interactions, but each line that is cited is whole-that is, each intonation unit is presented in its entirety-and no omissions have been made within the stretch of transcription that is cited. Whenever a new notational convention is being introduced, the symbol is written in boldface letters in the illustrative examples for that section, in order to highlight the feature in question. 1. UNITS One of the most striking, if elusive, features of conversation is its division into recognizable units at various levels. Any discourse transcription should indicate at least the most fundamental of these. This section presents symbols for boundaries between units of various kinds, including the intonation unit and the word unit, as well as truncated (uncompleted) variants of these units. (The turn, which is a fundamental unit of conversational discourse, is treated later in conjunction with the speaker identification label.) 1 . I . Intonation Unit A carriage return is used to indicate the end of an intonation unit (in effect, the boundary between two intonation units). Thus, each intonation unit appears on a separate line.2 2 In tWnerPI, a speaker's intonation unit should not be broken up into two lines; but for the ~~ ktonation unit that is so long that it will not fit on one line, see the section on P-nuon. Also. it may sometimes be necessary to b d an intonation unit using the "intonation -tinued'' s~mbgl (described in the section on specialized notations). Roughly speaking, an intonation unit is a stretch of speech uttered under a single coherent intonation contow. It tends to be marked by cues such as a pause and a shift upward in overall pitch level at its beginning, and a lengthening of its final syllable. For a fuller discussion of intonation units, the cues that mark them, and the methods for identifying them, see Du Bois et al. (1991), Chafe (tbis volume), and C~ttenden (1986, pp. 35-45). (1) ((Aesthetics)) S: That's interesting, I mean, th- that you should pair the word aesthetics, . .. with advertising. J: Yeah. 1.2. Truncated Intonation U n l A double hyphen (--) indicates that the speaker breaks off the intonation unit before completing its projected contour. This truncation occurs primarily in cases where a speaker utters the initial portion of a projected intonation unit but abandons it before finishing-that is, a false start. The double hyphen is not intended to represent the case of a unit that appears incomplete when measured against the canons of normative grammar. Intonation units that do not constitute complete clauses are Commonplace and usually quite normal-and "complete" as intonation units. For example, conjunctions (and) and particles (well) frequently appear as Complete intonation units marked with a comma at the end, which signals $6 Continuing" intonation (see below)-a kind of incompleteness, if you will, but one that is distinct in principle from the truncation signaled by double hyphen. The unit marked with a comma typically constitutes (apparently) all fbat the speaker projected to say within the current unit, whereas in the unit marked with a double hyphen the speaker projected to say more witbin the current unit but abandoned some portion of the projected utterance. T~ca t ion is thus measured not against normative notions of clause mmpleteness but against the speaker's presumed projection for tbe current intonation unit. (2) ((Ranch)) R: He doesn't have any -- ... He doesn't bow what's going on in this world. 48 DU SOIS, SCHUETZE-COBURN, PAOUNO, CUMMlNG Note that for every intonation unit that is complete, the line should end with some representation of its intonation contour (see below). If an intonation unit does not so end, it will in general have the double hyphen that marks truncation. 1.3. Word The space character is used to separate words, as in normal orthographic convention. A space also separates certain other notations, such as those for laughter, pause, inhalation, and so forth. (3) ((Aesthetics)) S: Hm. Hm. ... Okay. 1.4. Truncated Word A single hyphen (-) indicates where the speaker has truncated a word, leaving the end of the (projected) word ~nuttered.~ Truncation is often cued overtly via word-final glottal constriction, but not always-either plienomenon may occur independently of the other. Other truncation cues may include segment shortening, slight rhythrmc discontinuities, and so on. (Where it is deemed relevant, the precise pronunciation of the truncated word can be written using phonetic notation.) (4) ((Friends)) J: ... You know how they do that, so you can't s- ha- -- you don't have any balance. This symbol is not used to mark words that have been pronounced in an abbreviated fashion as part of an informal speech style. Truncation of a word is measured not against canons of "nonnal" or "standard" pronunciation but 3. OUTLINE OF DISCOURSE TRANSCRIPTION 49 against the speaker's projected pronunciation for the current word. Only when a speaker projects pronunciation of a word and then fails to complete that projected pronunciation is the phenomenon of word truncation involved. 2. SPEAKERS 2.1. Speaker ldentlication and Turn Beginning To identify the speaker of a given turn in the conversation, a code or a proper name (written all in capital letters) is inserted at the beginning of the turn. followed immediately by a colon (:). (5) ((Door)) A: Now that we have the [side door] fixed B: m t ' s kind of] -- A: he could. B: Yeah, C: Yeah. D: ... Sure. Although transcribers often assign prosaic codes such as "A" or "B" to their speakers, the reader tends to get a more vivid impression of who the participants are if their utterances are tagged with personal names, which are always more memorable. The name should in general be a pseudonym, since in any transcription destined for public presentation, privacy considerations would ordinarily preclu& use of the speakers' actual names. The choice of Wries becomes especially important if speakers use names to refer to each other during the course of a conversation, in which case, the pseudonym in the speaker identification label should match that in the spoken reference, so that relevant persons-whether they are spealung or merely spoken about-are clearly distinguished. If possible, pseudonyms should retain some flavor of the actual names. (6) ((Aesthetics)) JEFF: That's all it does. It doesn't [even] reach a conclusion. SARAH: [mhml, JEFF: The conclusion is up to you. SARAIf: mhm, JEFF: in going out to -- ... to buy the thing. 50 DU 801s. SCHUETZE-COBURN, CUMMING, AND PAOUNO SARAH: Hm. Hm. ... Okay. When it is unclear which of several speakers on a tape is responsible for a particular utterance or noise, the letter X is used to label the unidentified speaker. (7) ((Friends)) X: ((BLOWS WHISTLE)) Note that the stretch of speech between two different speaker labels constitutes, roughly speaking, the discourse unit known as a turn. The picture is somewhat complicated, however, by the listener's interjection of continuative backchannel responses (mhm, yeah, etc.) into a speaker's extended turn. Although a backchannel response must for clarity's sake bear a speaker label, as must the two sections of the turn it occurs within, one does not want to be misled by this practical consideration into overlooking the essential continuity of the extended turn unit across such fleeting interjections. 2.2. Speech Overlap Square brackets are used to indicate the beginning (left bracket) and the ending (right bracket) of overlap between the utterances of two speakers. One set of brackets is inserted surrounding the fust speaker's overlapping utterance portion, and a second set of brackets surrounds the second speaker's overlapping portion. This notation signals that the two bracketed utterance portions were uttered at the same time. For the sake of reading clarity, the second speaker's left bracket is aligned vertically under the fust speaker's left bracket (by insating as many spaces as needed). This alignment of space on the page helps to give an iconic sense of the temporal alignment of the two overlapping utterances. Note that only the left bracket need be aligned vertically; for reasons of clarity and practicality it is not advisable to force the right bracket to do so. ... R: [Because he wanted the stamps], B: [all those sta~nps], ... Mom let Ted Kemer have. 3. OUTUNE OF DISCOURSE TRANSCRIPTION 51 Wherever several overlaps occur in rapid succession within a short stretch of speech, distinctive combinations of brackets (e.g., single brackets [ I vs. double brackets [[ 11) may be needed to make clear what is overlapp'ing with what. This will be necessary whenever two distinct cases of overlap occur without at least one line of nonoverlapped text between them, because if only one kind of bracket were used (e.g., just single brackets) the reader could be misled to think that the fust and second bracketed portions (marked with single brackets) were simultaneous with the third and fourth bracketed portions (if also marked with single rather than double brackets). After one full line of speech containing no overlaps-when there is no longer danger of confusion- the use of double brackets can be dropped and single brackets resumed. If distinctive bracketing is needed again later in the same text, the single and double brackets should be used in alternation. Whenever no other overlaps occur nearby, it is best to use just the single brackets alone. (9) ((Aesthetics)) J: [Yeah]. S: IWhich] colors ... all of the communication, [[after]] that. J: [[Yeah]]. When there are many overlaps in very close succession, it may occasionally be necessary to use more than two kinds of distinctive brackets. For example, hiple brackets ([[[ I]]) or brackets indexed with numbers ([3 31) can be used to Create distinctive bracketing? (10) ((Dinner)) B: Nobody wants [to leave]. A: [They don't] move [[out]]. S: [[Berkeley]] just keeps [3 getting 31 bigger and [4 bigger 41. B: [3 yeah 31, 14 Yeah 41, ... Well it's amazing to me. Occasionally, it may be useful to employ distinctively marked (e.g., Qubled) brackets even when no other overlaps occur nearby, in order to help reader follow a complicated conversational exchange. I - 4 1 Ibe 1 is avoided because it is easily mistalcen for the lowercase Ietta 1 or even the crpit.l I " WY t ~ f l c e ~ ; nume& 2 through 9 engenda no such confusion. 52 DU BOIS. SCHUETZE-COBURN, CUMMINQ, AND PAOUNO (1 1) ((Hypochondria)) G: ... Well, the worst [[thing I ever had, K: [[He's a medical miracle]]. G: was brain]] fever, when I had proposed to her. K: 8888 . . . From which you haven't recovered. Often enough, the second speaker in an overlap begins to speak in the middle of a word being uttered by the fmt speaker. In such cases, it is useful to keep mck of precisely where the overlap begins, because this may carry significant information about how the speakers are responding to each other in "real time" (Schegloff, personal communication). To indicate this, the bracket is placed within the word at a point corresponding to the overlap. (When a bracket is written inside a word, no space should be inserted-whether the bracket is indexed or not-since any space would break up the word and cause it to appear as two separate words.) (1 2) ((Hypochondria)) G: ... Then I had, h, K: Cytomegalo[virus], G: [Don't] forget, cytomegalo [[virus]], K: [[@I1 D: [[What is that]]. 3. OUTLINE OF DISCOURSE TRANSCRIPTION 53 3. TRANSITIONAL CONTINUITY -I In speech, important information is carried in the speaker's intonation, encompassing fluctuations of pitch and other cues. Although a discourse transcription can never capture a complete representation of the infinite variety of possible intonation contours, it can nonetheless provide a useful nwesentation of at least the more critical intonational information by distinguishing broad classes of contours. It is useful to distinguish here bemeenfuncrional and phonetic analyses of intonation, each of which has its place in discmuse transcription. The symbols in this section deal with the functional of intonation, whereas a set of symbols that address the phonetic analysis of intonation is introduced in the section on terminal pitch (see also the section on tone) .5 m e system of categories presented in this section seeks to identify in general terms one aspect of intonational function, that of marking transitio~l continuity. When a speaker arrives at the end of an intonation unit, poised to continue on to the next-or not continue-the intonation contour usually gives a fairly clear indication of whether the discowse business at hand will be continued or has finished. This is transitional continuity: the marking of the degree of continuity that occurs at the transition point between one intonation unit and the next. The scope of the continuity-the question of what it is that is being continued or finished-is open-ended: A "final" contour may apply to the end of a sentence, the end of a turn, or the end of some other discowse unit. Whereas it may be possible to make finer discriminations in transitional continuity within the broad class of contours covered by each transitional continuity symbol, the distinctions among "final," "continuing," and "appeal" (see below), at least, seem to be basic. Although the intonation contour classes in this set are defined in terms of their function, each category is more or less consistently realized by a specific form: a specific phonetic contour, or a set of contours (in effect, intonational allomorphs), where each member of the set is determined by its context. The range of phonetic realizations for a given transitional continuity class differs somewhat from one language to the next, which is one reason for using functionally based categories: They help to ensure that similar intonational functions are written similarly across languages, facilitating comparison even where phonetic realizations differ. Preliminary observations in a limited number of languages suggest that, remarkably, all languages are likely to make intonational distinctions between the transitional continuity classes presented in this section, though their phonetic realizations may vary. The symbols used to represent transitional continuity here are drawn from those employed in written punctuation. Although using commas and periods in tbat are reminiscent of their function in written language does make it "ier to remember them, it also means that the transcriber must guard against into habits of thought associated with written punctuation. In discourse transcription as presented here, the punctuation symbols comma, pa and question mark always represent intonation classes and never -tical or semantic structure per se. - sk3 nsearchers who wish to pursue the representation of intonation in discourse further. the wok Of*-~uhlen (1986). haenden (1986). Crystal (1975), Cutler and Ladd (1983). (1982* this volume), McLemore (1991). S v ~ v i k (1990). SvMvik and Quirk (1980). and 0 t h ~ ~ be Consulted (see Caper-Kuhlen. 1986. and Cruttenden. 1986. for additional r e f m n ~ ) . notion of intonation unit, see Chafe (this volume) and Du Bois et d. (1991). 3.1. Final The period (.I indicates a class of intonation contours whose transitional continuity is regularly understood as final in a given language. For English and many other languages, this means primarily (but not exclusively) a fall to a low pitch at the end of an intonation unit. It is important to recall that, because this symbol represents an intonational category rather than a syntactic one, it can appear in places other than the end of a sentence. Conversely, it need not appear at the end of every (normative) sentence. ( 13) ((Depression)) R: For what. B: ... They make rope of i t 3.2. Continuing The comma 6 ) indicates a class of intonation contours whose transitional continuity is regularly understood as continuing, in a given language. The contour is often realized in English as a slight rise in pitch at the end of an intonation unit (beginning from a low or mid level), but it may have other realizations as well, each of which presumably has slightly different pragmatic implications. One type of continuing contour is realized by a terminal pitch that remains level; another, by a terminal pitch that falls slightly, but not low enough to be considered final.6 (14) ((Ranch)) R: If you think about it, yeah, if it rains a lot, the horse is always wet, and it's always moist, it's always on something moist, ... Sure it's going to be softer. 3.3. Appeal The question mark (?) indicates a class of intonation contours whose traasitional continuity is regularly understood as an appeal, in a given language. (For English, this is often realized by a marked high rise in pitch at 6 ~ h e significance of the end point of pitch movement is well known (Coupes-Kuhlen, 1986, pp. 88- 90). As one intonation specialist notes, "The lower the end point, the gcutcr the degn