Jeff Bezemer

Multimodal transcription as academic practice: a social semiotic perspective

With the increasing use of video recording in social research methodological questions about multimodal transcription are more timely than ever before. How do researchers transcribe gesture, for instance, or gaze, and how can they show to readers of their transcripts how such modes operate in social interaction alongside speech? Should researchers bother transcribing these modes of communication at all? How do they define a ‘good’ transcript? In this paper we begin to develop a social semiotic framework to account for transcripts as artefacts, treating them as empirical material through which transcription as a social, meaning making practice can be reconstructed. We look at some multimodal transcripts produced in conversation analysis, discourse analysis, social semiotics and micro‐ethnography, drawing attention to the meaning‐making principles applied by the transcribers. We argue that there are significant representational differences between multimodal transcripts, reflecting differences in the professional practices and the rhetorical and analytical purposes of their makers.

Participation of Surgical Residents in Operations: Challenging a Common Classification

BackgroundOne important form of surgical training for residents is their participation in actual operations, for instance as an assistant or supervised surgeon. The aim of this study was to explore what participation in operations entails and how it might be described and analyzed.MethodsA qualitative study was undertaken in a major teaching hospital in London. A total of 122 general surgical operations were observed. A subsample of 14 laparoscopic cholecystectomies involving one or more residents was analyzed in detail. Audio and video recordings of eight operations were transcribed and analyzed linguistically.ResultsThe degree of participation of trainees frequently shifted as the operation progressed to the next stage. Participation also varied within each stage. When trainees operated under supervision, the supervisors constantly adjusted their degree of control over the resident’s operative maneuvers.ConclusionsClassifications such as “assistant” and “supervised surgeon” describing a trainee’s overall participation in an operation potentially misrepresent the varying involvement of resident and supervisor. Video recordings provide a useful alternative for documenting and analyzing actual participation in operations.