Best Practices for Speech Corpora in Linguistic Research Workshop ...

Turns in interdisciplinary scientific research meetings:
Using ‘R’ for a simple and flexible tagging system
Seongsook Choi, Keith Richards
Centre for Applied Linguistics
University of warwick
S.Choi@warwick.ac.uk, K.Richards@warwick.ac.uk
Abstract
This paper presents our initial step towards identifying and mapping functions (of utterances/turns) and actions (a series of connected
actions managed over the course of a sequence of turns) inherent in authentic spoken language data using a simple and flexible tagging
system in R. Our ultimate goal is to capture the patterns of dynamic practices through which interactants produce and understand talkin-interaction
both qualitatively and quantitatively. The procedure involves annotating the transcripts with tags that blends elements of
CA (conversation analysis) and DA (discourse analysis), which we can then analyse quantitatively. The paper addresses the challenge of
developing and annotating a CA and DA integrated tagging system and demonstrates graphical representation of a quantitative analysis
that can be derived from it.
Keywords: conversation analysis, discourse analysis, R, turn-taking
1. Introduction
This paper presents our initial attempt at mapping functions
(of utterances/turns (Crookes, 1990)) and actions (a
series of connected actions managed over the course of a
sequence of turns) inherent in authentic spoken language
data using a simple and flexible tagging system in R (R
Development Core Team, 2011). Our ultimate goal is to
capture the patterns of dynamic practices through which
interactants produce and understand talk-in-interaction
both qualitatively and quantitatively. We carry this out by
annotating the transcripts with tags that blends elements of
CA (conversation analysis) and DA (discourse analysis),
which we can then analyse quantitatively.
While DA allows the use of priori categories as analytical
resources, this is explicitly rejected in CA methodology,
which has led to the assumption that the two are irreconcilable,
though CA findings have been used as the basis
for subsequent quantitative analysis (e.g. Mangione-Smith,
Stivers, Elliott, McDonald and Heritage, 2003). We seek
a closer integration of the two, using a CA analysis of sequences
of talk to reveal aspects of participant design which
would remain hidden in a DA approach, then identifying
discourse patterns within these which can be mapped, using
DA, across large data sets in order to reveal ways in
which relevant features of talk play out in different interactional
contexts. This paper focuses on issues of representation
in the quantitative dimension of our work, focusing
specifically on turn-taking.
2. The challenge of CA/DA synthesis
The overarching aim of this project is to combine the
analytic penetration of CA with the potential applications
of DA to large databases of spoken interaction. In this
section we identify the challenges which this presents and
the ways in which we intend to address these.
Although DA embraces a much wider analytical spectrum
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than CA, their very different conceptual foundations
make procedural synthesis inherently problematic. While
ethnography and CA have been widely accepted as complementary
approaches (e.g. Miller and Fox, 2004), as
have ethnography and DA (e.g. Sarangi and Roberts, 2005)
and, more broadly, ethnography and linguistics (Rampton,
Tusting, Maybin, Barwell, Creese and Lytra, 2004), the
differences between CA and DA, at least in the form that
we draw on this project, were exposed in debates that began
over a quarter of a century ago (e.g. Levinson, 1983; Schegloff,
2005; Van Rees, 1992). Since then each has followed
its own lines of development, CA developing in applied
areas and connecting with Membership Categorisation
Analysis, DA engaging with contextual aspects to the
point where researchers would now claim that ‘at its
heart DA remains an ethnographically grounded study of
language in action’ (Sarangi and Roberts, 2005, p. 639).
To our knowledge, no attempt has been made to bring
them together as part of the same analytic enterprise and
our attempt to do so draws on forms of DA which are
susceptible to coding and quantitative analysis.
The reason for this is clear from the following comment on
quantitative studies from a CA perspective (Heritage, 1995,
p. 406):
Quantitative studies have not, so far, matched
the kinds of compelling evidence for the features
and uses of conversation practices that have
emerged from ‘case by case’ analysis of singular
exhibits of interactional conduct. It does not, at
the present time, appear likely that they will do so
in the future. For quantitative studies inexorably
draw the analyst into an ‘external’ view of the
data of interaction, draining away the conductevidenced
local intelligibility of particular situated
actions which is the ultimate source of security
that the object under investigation is not a
theoretical or statistical artefact.