The Graphic Transcript: Poaching Comic Book Grammar for Inscribing the Visual, Spatial and Temporal Aspects of Action

A brief review is presented of existing forms of transcription of talk that incorporate visual, spatial and temporal elements. The most common forms use text and a line-by-line-based system, and conversa- tion analytic transcripts have been successful in making a number of other features of talk visible. The desire of geographers to draw upon video recordings and time-lapse photography has lead to time- series images being used to bring those visual materials into documents. The graphic transcript is proposed as an alternative form of transcription that hybridises the qualities and evidentiary criteria of the transcript with the representational conventions of the comic strip. The comic strip itself has recently been undergoing a period of experimentation and hybridisation with other forms. The graphic transcript brings together familiar comic strip features such as panels, guttering, speech bubbles and captions with the transcript’s criteria of providing an evidentiary record of earlier events that is available for re-inspection and re-interpretation by other analysts.