Orality and transcription problems: the original hypothesis

In order to find out what kind of relation there is between orality and linguistic registers, two scales of transcription difficulty were stated taking into consideration the following two parameters:

Degree of formality (Scale 1)

Two ends can be considered when dealing with the texts in terms of transcription difficulty: on one end, the most complex, those texts distinguished as private; on the other end, the easiest, those texts classified as formal.

informal      media    formal

+ difficult ————————————— -difficult

Number of speakers (Scale 2).

This parameter affects only those texts classified as informal (the most complex according to Scale 1) and considers as most complex those texts with a higher number of participants (three or more), while those with one or two participant imply a lower degree of difficulty.

conversation     dialog       monolog

+ difficult —————————————— -difficult