The arguments developed in this book rest heavily on the empirical analysis of both written texts and transcripts of spoken discourse produced in the Polynesian language in common use on Nukulaelae Atoll, Tuvalu Group, Central Pacific. This approach foregrounds two questions of particular concern: how spoken discourse should be transcribed; and what orthographic conventions should be adopted in light of the fact that there is no standardized orthography for the language in question. I have adopted a number of conventions in answer to these questions, which are described here.

Transcripts and written texts

Transcribing spoken discourse is an analytic act, as many scholars have demonstrated (e.g., Edwards 1993, Gumperz and Berenz 1993, Ochs 1979a, Tedlock 1983); the selection of linguistic and extra-textual information to be included in the transcript from a very broad range of possibilities, as well as their visual presentation, involve decisions that predetermine how the transcripts are read and what categories become the focus of analytic scrutiny.

Many spoken excerpts cited in this book are not the object of detailed grammatical analysis, although I do pay attention to formal features in my analysis of the meaning of many excerpts. I have therefore adopted transcription conventions that represent a compromise between the fine-grained transcription system used in Conversation Analysis (e.g., Atkinson and Heritage 1984) and the selectively translated paraphrases with which social anthropologists are commonly satisfied.