Parents and children frequently do not take strict turns while talking. They may interrupt one another, talk while the other is talking, or start talking at the same time. This section is intended to help you decide how to order the utterances in the transcript when more than one person is speaking at the same time.
The basic unit of analysis in our transcripts is the utterance (and any accompanying gestures). This is what we transcribe and annotate. You can think of an utterance as a single speech act – the act of making a move in a language game. Please do not include more than a single utterance on a given line.
Always order utterances based on when they begin, not when they end. In the example below, the child says “No!” when the mom says the word “put,” but she does not pause to acknowledge his speech. For this reason, you must wait to transcribe “No!” until the next line, despite the fact that the mom’s speech continues long past when C finishes speaking. This is a very common scenario.
| p_utts | c_utts |
|---|---|
| go put your blocks away! | |
| no! |
If the PCG and child begin speaking at the exact same moment, transcribe their speech on separate lines, placing them in the order Experimenter (for literacy visits), Mother, Father, Child. Thus, in the extremely unlikely event that all four transcribable entities (three for home visits) speak at the same time, the transcript would looks as follows:
| key | p_utts | c_utts | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| oh my gosh! | Experimenter speaks | ||
| M | careful, honey! | Mother speaks | |
| F | look at her go! | Father speaks | |
| I’m flying! | Child speaks |
Note
This rule is effective as of Transcription Rules version 1.4. Prior to this, utterances by a PCG and the child that began at the exact same moment were transcribed on the same line with a b placed in the key column to indicate that they both spoke at the same time. The rule was altered because there was little consensus on how to determine whether two utterances began at the same moment and, furthermore, it was deemed unnecessary to make the distinction.
If a speaker begins speaking, is interrupted, and pauses as a result of the interruption, treat that as you would a normal series of conversational turns. End the first speaker’s turn with two dashes --, then transcribe the interrupting utterance in the next row, and finally transcribe the rest of the interrupted person’s utterance in the row below that. This scenario is also far less common than the scenario in 3.2.
| key | p_utts | c_utts | context |
|---|---|---|---|
| honey, when do you – | |||
| Mommy! | C interrupts M | ||
| want to eat? |
Note
Whenever dashes appear next to a word, it is important for Jason’s programs that we put a space between the word and the dashes.
Some households have dual primary caregivers for which you transcribe both parents’ speech to the child. Follow rules 3.1 to 3.4 to determine the order of conversational turns between two caregivers. If both primary caregivers ever start talking to the child at the exact same time, transcribe the mother’s speech first and the father’s speech second.
Treat gestures as utterances when they occur alone. When a person gestures while speaking, put the gesture and the speech on the same utterance line. When a person gestures but does not speak, use rules 3.1 to 3.5 to determine where to place the gestures in the transcript (using the columns designated for gestures, NOT the p_utts or c_utts columns). Never put a gesture, or a continued gesture, on the same line as a different person’s speech or gesture. For a further discussion of gesture transcription rules, see the gesture transcription documents. [Note: add a link to whatever documentation we have on this]
If a person is gesturing while speaking, but the gesture clearly starts before the speech, transcribe the gesture as a stand-alone gesture first (on its own line), and then once the speech starts, transcribe it as a continued gesture along with the speech. This means you will have transcribed the gesture twice. Do this only when the beginning of the gesture very clearly precedes the person’s spoken utterance. If a person who did not perform the gesture starts speaking while the first person is gesturing, do not indicate a continued gesture with the second person’s speech.