afterthoughts

a girlfriend and her boyfriend eating lunch at home.

i have transcribed a conversation once before with my students during a novel discussion, and it was so tedious that i never did it again. this conversation was while eating lunch, so chewing and swallowing gave us each time between exchanges. the problem i had while transcribing class discussion was the constant overlap between 3 or more students vyying for the floor, and the sometimes fuzzy outpour or confused thoughts that children often exhibit. so between two adults, it was more orderly, with the rules of conversation, argument, disagreements, etc. in place. also, our familiarity with one another (a mixture of the rapport function and continuing state of incipient talk) gave way to less interruption or fast talking that one might find with a conversation between two people not as familiar with one another. but in general, we are not fast talkers or habitual interrupters.

the biggest difference between oral conversation and written language was the body language and humor that i was not able to convey on paper. between two intimate people, i think there is probably more said through body language than through oral language, a tacit understanding without words that we have gathered throughout our time together. secondly, timing is everything. as much as i tried to convey a sense of delay by noting the pauses, there were certainly times when one of us would reply faster than other times or pause between two words in one thought. i was only able to capture the large gaps in time, which i would attribute to our eating more than think time. though there were moments of thought time. those nuances i am conjecturing at from actually partaking in the coversation, though an outsider listening to the same conversation might call some silences 'think time'.

the silent moments were interesting to me. had this been a conversation with a less intimate individual, the 14 second silence that i documented might have been uncomfortable, but i don't recall feeling awkward or noticing the silences until i replayed the conversation. in our case, silence is accepted.

if i did this again, i'd try two new things. first, i would video the conversation. and second, i would take the transcript and try to reenact it with nick to see how far or how close we might get to the original.

3 minutes of lunch

here's a 3 minute piece of lunch conversation yesterday.


A: Baby, I think having a sit….like for you to sit down at a table, to have..just eating and conversation bothers you. You’re just not used to it. This is how I grew up. (Laughing) you’re so diplomatic, you gave me half the tofu.
N: It’s a bento..
A: How kind of you to give me half
A: No, seriously, I think the way you grew up, it’s, I mean, the way that you’re used to, it’s not like just sitting down, you need like the
N: ambiance
A: insufficient. Like talking, just talking at a table is not sufficient for you unless you’re at a restaurant
(2 sec)
N: mmm…
(3 sec)
A: this is how I grew up
(14 sec)
A: did you microwave all this?
N: no
A: oh
(3 sec)
N: these beans are good
(2 sec)
A: these are soybeans?
(6 sec)
A: I’ve never had soybeans like this
(2 sec)
A: you can have mine, I don’t really like em
(2 sec)
A: They taste like pork n beans
N: yeah, they taste like baked beans right?
A: uh-huh
(4 sec)
A: are you sure these are soybeans? For sure? I thought soybeans were round, more round like circular
N: uh-uh. Soybeans are shaped like this
A: I’ve had the kind that are different looking
(8 sec)
A: sitting around a table like this (3 sec) when you’re at home..I don’t think you’re used to
(3 sec)
A: When your mom cooks for you all, like when you were younger
N: yeah
A: what did you all do? What was the routine?
N: it wasn’t a routine. We didn’t always sit at the table or always (1 sec) but usually it was us three
A: uh-huh uh-huh
N: the kids eat together and the parents…because we…sometimes we’d go like watch TV while we eat
A: and your parents would sit together at the table?
N: yeah like they didn’t..they just like
A: OK
N: sitting at a table
A: always?
A: and then sometimes all three of you would sit with your parents?
N: umhmm
A: but it was never like
N: there was no standard
(2 sec)
A: odd. I told you how in my family we always sit at the same seat
N: (laughs)
A: we always
N: we definitely don’t have that. There’s no assigned seats
A: that’s not how…it was never assigned but it was just like the given..just made it easier because like my parents would put rice on our plates but they would..some of us wanted more rice so my parents would know like whose plate was which
(2 sec)
A: even now, when my brothers come home or when it’s like holiday time and my brothers come home we still sit in the same seats
(2 sec)
A: (laughs)