Computerized transcripts of social interactions

The advantages of a standardized format for transcribing social interactions to computerized media are discussed. The chief advantage of this scheme is that transcripts can be easily exchanged among research groups and across text processing programs. An important element of a transcript is the set of conventions, calledmarkup, that identify the metalinguistic features of texts. Conventions should employ symbols that (1) cannot be mistaken for ordinary text, (2) explicitly describe their linguistic function, and (3) obey a grammar. Social scientists who transcribe social interactions should participate in the development of a standardized scheme of descriptive markup for the encoding of machine-readable transcripts, based on the Standard Generalized Markup Language.