Trans-scription as a social activity: An ethnographic approach

Of all the tasks performed by linguists, transcription is certainly one of the most closely scrutinized activities on the data construction chain. Paradoxically it is the least well understood. Despite their diversity, all the approaches to transcription have in common the fact of examining it from the point of view of its outcome: the scription. My point of departure is different: in order to deconstruct scription, I move upstream and investigate the activity that produces it, thus focusing on the trans process. The data on which this analysis rests are videotaped transcription activity performed collaboratively by a linguistic anthropologist and her two consultants. My analysis demonstrates how scription is constructed in a perpetual tension between authority and authorship.