Contact the UCSB Department of Linguistics for more information. Discourse transcription is the process of creating a representation in writing of a speech event, in such a way as to make it accessible to discourse research.
All transcription is thus a form of interpretation .
The process of interpretation is highly complex and far from mechanical, drawing heavily on the transcriber's linguistic and sociocultural knowledge as a speaker of the language being transcribed, as well as on his or her judgement in evaluating the significance of the perceived cues. The transcriber must strive to provide the most perceptive, faithful, and revealing interpretive account possible. References Chafe, Wallace. Discourse, Conciousness and Time. Univeristy of Chicago Press.