Discourse Patterns in First Language Use at Hcme and Second Language Learning at School: an Ethnographic Approach

Xethod I IOO

interpretation and collecting contextual clues as much as possible.
However, the theoretical impossibility of coding speakers' intentions is
pointed out by McTear <1985). For a deeper discussion of the use of
interpretative analysis, see Veils,1985, Chapter 2.

The logistics of the field work and the limited expertise and resources
on which the IXDE team could rely, possibly exacerbated these problems,
in that not enough attention has been given to the details of context
description: the Identity, age, social and family relationship status of
the person interacting with the Target Child remain in some cases
uncertain; the activities they carry out are briefly discussed, but the
referents are often missing; transcription of paralinguistic and prosodic
features Is sketchy and record of eye and face movement non-existent.

On the other hand, a good part of the tapes were roughly transcribed in
the evening of the same day of recording by the same researchers who
were taking the field notes while the children were being recorded, so
that the reconstruction of the situation to interpret the talk was easy.

On the basis of that first transcription and re-play, the transcripts
were edited in their final form and translated into Portuguese. Great care
has been taken over the accuracy of the translation (see 3.4 and page
102>.

<<   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   >>

More intriguing information