Читать книгу Bilingual Couples in Conversation - Silja Ang-Tschachtli - Страница 34

The interviews were transcribed using Express Scribe transcription software. Since my analysis required a relatively precise transcription including a number of suprasegmental featuressuprasegmental features, I adapted the comprehensive transcription conventions proposed by Du Bois et al. (1993) to suit the foci of my analysis. I decided to put each intonation unitintonation unit (see below) on a separate line, and to mark the nuclear stressstressesnuclear in each intonation unit with a caret (^). At the end of each intonation unit, its terminal pitchterminal pitch was indicated, such as rising (/), falling (\) or level (_) pitch, as well as glissando pitch movements (/~ \~) and strong riseterminal pitchrises fallterminal pitch (//) and falls (\\). I also included other aspects such as pauses (… for standard pauses and .. for very short pauses), prosodic lengthening (:), strong/contrastive stresses (^^) and elements of conversational organisation, such as overlapoverlap [ ] and latching (=). Some intonation units containedspeechrhythmic rhythmic rhythmic speech speech (_<RH>) — with a beatable rhythm — or marked “marcato” speechmarked speechspeechmarked (_<MRC>), with several marked stresses. Vocal noisesvocal noises like tongue clickstongue click (_<TSK>), inhalation and exhalation (_{<H> <Hx>}) and laughter (_@) were indicated, too. Different types of non-permanent voice qualityvoice quality were also marked in the transcriptions, for example soft (_<P>), loud (_<F>), low (_<LO>), high (_<HI>), husky (_<HSK>), creaky (_<CRK>), smiling (_<:-)>) or nasal (_<NAS>) voice. Some changes in pitch and loudness over the course of an intonation unit or turn were indicated as well, namely increasing or decreasing loudness (_<CRE> and _<DIM>) and pitch (_<UP> and _<DOW>). In addition, I marked very fast and slow speech (_<A> and _<L> respectively). If necessary, comments were added in double brackets and translations in single quotation marks (see “List of transcription conventions” at the beginning of the book for a complete list).

Transcribing was painstaking, due to the length of the interviews (11.25 hours in total), the level of detail of the transcriptions and the fact that there were several speakers whose speech overlappedoverlap fairly often (on average, each participant overlapped 528 times with another speaker).17 Nevertheless, I deemed the prosodicprosodic featuressuprasegmental features detail of the transcriptions necessary, as the prosodic features might contain clues about the speakers’communicative intentions or emotional state. Only prosodic elements that I did not believe to yield any insights for the specific purpose of this study were omitted. These include, for example, secondary stresses or standard pausespauses in between intonation units, which were not indicated unless they were exceptionally long. Such pauses are difficult to compare; as Edwards notes, measuring pauses is only partially meaningful, because “perceived pause length depends not only on physically measurable time, but also on speech rate, location of the pause […] and other factors” (2001: 322). Furthermore, it is often impossible to make a judgement on who is responsible for a pause that occurs between turns (2001: 332).

I encountered a number of difficultieschallengesmethodological during the transcription process, which were partly due to the fact that the couples have very different manners of speaking (e.g. shorter or longer pauses, one or more stresses for intonation units). First of all, it was not always clear when to “break” an intonation unit. An intonation unit has been defined as “a stretch of speech uttered under a single coherent intonation contour” (Du Bois et al. 1993: 47). It is supposed to consist of a nucleus (primary accent) and other syllables, though it has been proposed that an intonation unit is often not restricted to this (Szczepek Reed 2006: 28; Du Bois et al. 1993: 56), which can present problems. Szczepek Reed, for instance, infers from her own transcriptions that “a given intonation unit is by no means restricted to one nucleus, but may carry two or more syllables with equally prominent stress” (2006: 28). Chafe (1994) suggests that intonation units can be delimited by pausing, pitch change, duration or tempo changes, intensity, voice quality or speaker changes. Other scholars, such as Gumperz, have grouped intonation units into minor tone groups, which “delimit a message treated as a component of a larger whole, and major tone groups […] which are more independent” (1982: 110). Yet this distinction is also often difficult to uphold. I considered all of these factors in my own transcriptions, but was still obliged to make an instinctive decision in a number of cases. Despite these challenges, I considered distinguishing intonation units to be very important, as they provide information with regard to turn-taking behaviour (see Gumperz 1982) and are necessary to determine terminal pitch.

Another difficult decision, which is linked to the question of the intonation units, was where to place the nuclear stressstressesnuclear. As Gumperz remarks, “accent placement is for the most part grammatically conditioned” and tends to fall on content words towards the end of the intonation unit (1982: 111). This is not always the case, though, and contrastive accents or deaccentuation may also occur. While a single nuclear stress could be clearly discerned in most intonation units in my interviews, there were nonetheless instances where there were several stresses without a significant difference between them. In these situations, I chose to set several nuclear stresses. In most cases, this correlates either with a rhythmic speech (_<RH>) or marked speechspeechmarked (_<MRC>), both of which were also indicated.

Moreover, there were considerable differences with regard to stress as well as vowel lengtheninglengthening between the varieties of English spoken by the participants. Generally speaking, British English seems to be more strongly stress-timed than American English,18 and there is a clearer distinction between short and long vowels. This means that the transcriptions might not be entirely uniform as regards aspects such as intonation, lengthening or pausing, since it is possible that a stress or a pause of similar intensity or length might appear more salient in the context of a conversation in one variety of Englishvarietyof English than in another.