'Um, er': how meaning varies between speech and its typed transcript. (December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Collins, Harry; Leonard-Clarke, Willow; O'Mahoney, Hannah
• Is Part Of: Qualitative research. Volume 19:Number 6(2019)
• Page Start: 653
• Page End: 668
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Subjects: certainty in text and speech -- disfluencies -- editing of transcripts -- interview transcription -- meaning -- qualitative research -- transcribing fillers: um, er, uh; Qualitative research -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- Research -- Periodicals; 300.72
• DOI: 10.1177/1468794118816615
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-7941

Abstract

We report a small empirical study on the way the transcription used to represent speech affects its meaning. We show that 'disfluencies' in speech indicate far more uncertainty in the speaker when transmitted in text than when transmitted in recorded sound. This has important implications for how transcribed interviews should be edited when they are being used to convey meaning rather than the organization of phonemes. We propose the implications of different ways of representing speech in text could be a new subject for investigation. Presented here is one possible empirical approach to such studies.