Transcribing prosody

Abstract

Our starting point in this response is the “elusiveness” of prosodic aspects of speech, commented on by the author of the lead article of this clinical forum (Peppe, 2009). We suggest that a useful strategy for coming to grips with this “elusiveness”, on the part of clinical professionals confronted with what presents as prosodic abnormalities, is the endeavour to transcribe prosody—an endeavour unfortunately dismissed in the lead article. We argue that the transcription is an analytic exercise, and as such an important part of clinical decision making. We illustrate this with an example from prosodic disturbances in hearing impaired clients.

Keywords:

• Prosody
• phonetics
• transcription