A CASE OF TRANSCRIPTIONAL STEREOTYPING

In preparation for a workshop I was to lead at the Odense conference, I was sent a tape and transcripts of conversations between a Dane and a German speaking to each other in English. The Odense transcripts wer e produced mainly in standard orthography. One exception was frequent use of the token 'off' for the word 'of'. My hearings often disagreed with the Odense renderings of the word 'of'. An exercise in comparison yielded results which suggest that the Odense 'off', rather than accu rately depicting a pronunciational detail, was used in some independen ce of pronunciational details and might best be characterized as a ste reotype; in the case of the Dane, a benign stereotype in that it does capture something the Dane tends to do, but in the case of the German, a malignant stereotype in that it altogether misrepresents what the G erman does.