Meh. Meh? Meh! Qualitative Introduction

Tim Rapley's Doing Conversation, Discourse and Document Analysis was productive and unproductive. I feel like I am always reading introductory books on qualitative research. So a lot of the information that he presented in chapters 1-4 was repeated in other texts on research. For example, he puts out the need for qualitative research when comparing two statements: "Freedom fighter kills politician," and "Terrorist kills politician." The terminology one would choses contextualizes her social ideologies. [Meh.] I know that already. But I'm not sure why it's part of the introduction to a methods book. If someone wants to "do conversation," don't they already know that word choice is a huge consideration? [Meh?] But a little contextual credit goes to Rapley, especially as I review the chapter to post on the anniversary of 9/11. Our society has changed its stance on using these words, and it has become part of our national voice. One point for Rapley for using a good contextual example to prove words matter. [Meh!] (But I don't think I have ever heard American soldiers being referred to as "freedom fighters," while I have readily heard the US media call foreign parties "terrorists." Are these two terms part of a binary pair? I always thought it was soldier/terrorist.) So Rapley introduces a standard issue--albeit one that needs to be included here--with a kick ass example. Thus my confused title remains for the post. I'm not sure if I'm bored or happy with the text.

One subject that was pretty nifty was in chapter 5 on the Jeffersonian transcription styles. A researcher includes additional markers in a transcription to implicate tempo, style, stress, and tone in the speaker's voice. In general, I found that I transcribe slowly. We're talking one hour to listen to a sound bite, write it down, listen to it again, fix it, listen to it again, fix it, listen to it again, then maybe move on. I'm not sure if I'm super slow at it, a little too OCD and trying to get everything down, or missing some great tip to go faster. But it's hard to be upset about the time when I'm confident about the transcription once it's done.

Additionally, I never thought about video transcription. Rapley definitely got a "Meh!" on that commentary. I've never done a project that required a video file, so it never occurred to me to include taped cues. One question I have is how to include all the video cues within the audio transcription. I know my OCD is going to kick in to make sure everything is aligned. Hmm.