A4: Better Late Than Never!

The Bavelas et al article, instead of actually providing any suggestions for methods of language analysis, served as something of a how-to-guide for creating your own thesis, transcribing conversations, and analyzing it in some conventional manner. One issue it did present was the act of transcribing itself. There are several ways of recording any given conversation. FtF, for example, can be recorded with a video and audio recorder, with just an audio recorder, with someone copying down what is said shorthand, etc. In each subsequent example, of course, a great deal of information gets lost, so researchers must always be very careful to choose the tech that's right for their purposes. Some conversations (interviews, for example) usually don't need any more information than what's given verbally. Language analysis, however, usually requires more input.
To illustrate my point (or attempt to), I transcribed two conversations on the same subject, one via FtF (only recorded audio) and one via text. I won't go into a great deal of analysis, all I'm looking for is how many times the conversation seems to derail (some break in verbal meaning), when in fact both participants maintain an understanding of the meaning (no track 2 verification).

FtF:
A: Dude, goin to the concert on Wednes-
B: The VAST one?
A: Don't like 'em?.
B: I do, man, but I've got -
A: Ohhh, yeah, you've got that prelim, I forgot.
B: Yeah. Besides, ever since their first -
A: They've definitely gone downhill. I still wanna see 'em, though. Lemme know if you change your mind.
B: Sure.

IM:
A: So, heard about the concert on Wednesday?
B: Ohh yeah, the VAST one?
A: Yeah, man. I'm really excited.
B: Me, too. I love their old stuff.
B: Think they'll play any?
A: Hope so.
A: It'll be good though, regardless.
B: Definitely.

In the FtF conversation, person B made a negative facial expression when asking for clarification that the concert was, in fact, with VAST. Though A never bothered to clarify, he took that expression as another bit of communication, stating "I'm not a big fan." This was not B's intended meaning, however, and B had to clarify that verbally. Although an extra bit of communication took place here, the meaning wasn't lost in the transcription process and no meaning was gained non-verbally. There were also three points at which one speaker interrupted the other. The first two were to interject track 2 clarification or information and didn't seem to involve any missed non-verbal cues. On the third to last line, B finished his sentence with a little wave of his hand, as though searching for the word 'album' and never finding it. Although this could be construed as non-verbal communication, no actual information is given. In both non-verbal cases, no new information is really presented outside of what an audio recorder can pick up, and thus the conversation seems to flow from an audio standpoint. The IM serves as the control in this point, since the conversation log covers every bit of information (except for pauses, of course...there were no notable ones). In many cases, a FtF transcription of simple verbal imput would seem to be far more confusing than its IM counterpart - this is why Bavelas et al warns researchers to use video when video is needed - but this simply isn't the case here. Which means I didn't reinforce my hypothesis...oh well.