`Transcription' is taken as those methods that seek to fix data in a manner that lets that data be more readily subjected to reflection, reproduced, and analysed. This is particularly important either where that data is transient, such as in spoken interaction, or where the data is sufficiently complex in its own right, as in complex visuals such as infographics, comics, etc., that one needs systematic ways of focusing attention on what is to be considered relevant for analysis. Although transcription covers both kinds of targets, it has traditionally been developed and associated most closely with conversational data; early work on conversation analysis and interaction in particular developed highly systematised ways of encoding spoken language data that have since taken on central roles in defining what is considered methodologically appropriate. But earlier notions of transcription now come under considerable pressure from two quite different directions. First, the sheer range of data that is not only available but which is considered important for understanding phenomena under study has exploded in breadth and variety -- driven both by more inclusive notions of what the relevant phenomena are and much improved technological methods for collecting data concerning them (cf. Mondada 2007, Lapadat 2000, Ayass 2015). Second, transcriptions were originally targetted towards reproduction in static print products, often further restricted by journal practices to typewriter-like manuscripts -- this bears little resemblance to what is possible with contemporary media and so it is questionable to what extent this can yield objects that are optimally `fit for purpose'. 

In this presentation, I reconstrue `transcription' from the perspective of radical multimodality. Extending further the idea that transcription is a form of multimodal remediation as suggested by Bezemer/Mavers (2011), I characterise the theory and practice of transcription as the performance of a specific genre within the general model of multimodal communication set out in Bateman/Wildfeuer/Hiippala (2017). Direct consequences of this are then discussed, specifically: 

(i) genres are defined according to communicative goals, the primary goal for any genre of transcription is to achieve (Peircean) diagrammaticity and indexicality with respect to selected object phenomena,

(ii) genres may be used with a variety of media, each of which makes available a range of semiotic modes that may be employed in service of the genre's communicative goals -- transcriptions can therefore use any multimodal forms of expression they may be appropriate, and

(iii) criteria from information design can (and should) be applied to evaluate the effectiveness of any forms of expression adopted when

performing a transcription genre. 

It will be argued that this brings all possible kinds of transcription together under a single unified theoretical umbrella, ranging from  transcriptions meant for typewriters on the one hand right through to dynamic immersive information visualisations as pursued in digital humanities on the other. Future presentations of data in the form of transcriptions must therefore be variable so that they can be designed and selected as appropriate for particular communicative or analytic tasks being taken on. The role of organising data for analysis is thereby shifted theoretically to characterisations of the diagrammatic nature of data representations, independent of concrete transcriptions. This opens up the possibility of presenting any particular body of data in multiple ways as best suited to the analytic points being made, the intended audience, and the available media, rather than according to potentially overly restricted transcription practices.

References

Ayaß, Ruth (2015) Doing data: the status of transcripts in Conversation Analysis. Discourse Studies , Vol. 17, No. 5 , pp. 505-528. 

Bateman, John A. / Wildfeuer, Janina / Hiippala, Tuomo (2017) Multimodality -- Foundations, Research and Analysis. A Problem-Oriented Introduction. de Gruyter Mouton: Berlin. 

Bezemer, Jeff / Mavers, Diane (2011) Multimodal transcription as academic practice: a social semiotic perspective. International Journal of Social Research Methodology , Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 191-206. 

Lapadat, Judith C. (2000) Problematizing transcription: Purpose, paradigm and quality. International Journal of Social Research Methodology , Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 203-219. 

Mondada, Lorenza (2007) Commentary: transcript variations and the indexicality of transcribing practices. Discourse Studies , Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 809-821. 

John Bateman is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Linguistics and English Departments of the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Sciences at Bremen University. He received his PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh University in 1986. His research areas revolve around multimodal and multilingual semiotic descriptions, functional and computational linguistics, accounts of register, genre, functional variation, and natural language semantics, and formal and linguistic ontologies.  He has published widely in all of these areas, including monographs on text generation (1991, Pinter, co-authored with Christian Matthiessen), multimodality and genre (2008, Palgrave), film (2012, Routledge, with Karl-Heinrich Schmidt), text and image (2014, Routledge), and an introduction to multimodality as a new discipline (2017, de Gruyter, with Janina Wildfeuer and Tuomo Hiippala). Recent work focuses specifically on the semiotic foundations of multimodality and the use of empirical methods for their investigation, combining interdisciplinary studies drawing on eye-tracking, brain-imaging and corpus studies.