Fieldnotes

The Assignment

You have already done one set of fieldnotes for your greetings assignment. Just as with the greetings assignment, you should make jottings and careful observations about what goes on.  This time, however, you will know the people involved and have data (a recording) you can review.  You will also need to have your informants sign a release form.

The interaction you tape should be about 30 to 60 minutes long.  After the interaction, you will focus on just 3 to 5 minutes where the conversation is lively and where issues of power, identity, values, or other interesting features of the interaction come through. These minutes do not have to be continuous—feel free to transcribe from different parts of your recording.

Transcribe those 3 to 5 minutes word for word. You must also mark the transcriptions with the conventions listed on page 156 of your textbook to capture other features of the interaction.  Make sure to give yourself a lot of time for the transcription. A good transcription usually requires you to listen to the tape many times. This will take several hours. You will be graded on the accuracy and detail of your transcription.

You fieldnotes should provide a thick description of the interaction similar to the one you wrote for the greetings assignment. Remember to focus on why things are happening as well as what is happening. What are the patterns you decided to focus on in your transcription (interruption, joking, insults, swearing, conversational signals, etc.)? What do you think those patterns suggest about the social business of the participants, how they express their identities and values or cultivate power? Refer to at least one article we have read in the textbook and use direct quotations from your transcript.

VIdeo: https://www.instagram.com/tv/Can-uR1qOky/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=