At the completion of this study leave period, three students and a teacher were asked: “What’s it been like for you working with me?” Each student was approached separately, and their account of the experience recorded, typed into text, and then given back to them for checking and amendment. Each student was then given a copy of their completed transcript and a copy of the interview tape. It was agreed that the facilitator could keep a copy of the transcript and the accompanying tape for study purposes. A similar process was undertaken with the teacher with whom Gluck had worked very closely during his time at the college.
The interviews were undertaken at the end of the college year, a year that resulted in students developing and using their stories to become literacy-efficient visual artists in the creative arts discipline. The students’ processes culminated in them being able to risk collaboration with music and theatre students, so that elements of their stories were performed and presented in public to the arts community, their families, friends, and colleagues. The full text of all the stories that the visual art students had developed during the year was displayed in books on the walls of the performance space.
The transcription of the students’ and teacher’s interviews took place during the college summer vacation. The process of typing, checking, and amending the transcripts yielded riches beyond words. The process of transcribing the interviews with the teacher and two of the students was relatively straightforward. The patterns or combination of words and meaning were easily identified and transcribed. However, the transcription of the third student’s interview was exhausting — his 90-minute tape took many weeks to transcribe. Listening to his tape and attempting to transcribe verbatim led to repeated loss of focus of the words spoken and comprehension of what he talked about.
Eventually, it was realised that he had filled his speech with thinking and cultural safety phrases such as “sort of thing like that”. For example, his speech went something like this:
I was walkin’ down the mission, sort of thing like that with my mates sort of thing like that when we ran into the mission superintendent sort of thing like that and he sort of thing like that asked us sort of thing like that where we sort of thing like that were going sort of thing like that. We stopped sort of thing like that and said we were sort of thing like that going sort of thing like that to the river sort of thing like that to fish for red fin.
After recognising the patterns in the speech, it was possible to go back to his tape and easily make meaning and record verbatim. The process was identical to working one-to-one with the student on the computer: he talked, and the learning facilitator automatically filtered out his thinking and safety phrases. When these “phrases” were edited out, the following text emerged:
I was walkin’ down the mission with my mates when we ran into the mission superintendent. He asked where we were going. We stopped and said we were going to the river to fish for red fin.
However as Ernie Blackmore, an indigenous PhD student in English, and familiar with DTW, observed:
And this [the version where the phrases are edited out] is crap! Although it tells the ‘story’ it is not the ‘voice’ or the intent of the narrator. It is homogenised beyond the point of recognition.
Safety phrases remain an integral part of the student’s everyday speech and urban voice. Everything that he said, including the thinking and safety phrases, was re-recorded into text. When this transcript was presented to the student at the beginning of the next school year, his use of safety and thinking phrases was highlighted using strike-throughs:
I was walkin’ down the mission, sort of thing like that with my mates sort of thing like that when we ran into the mission superintendent sort of thing like that and he sort of thing like that asked us sort of thing like that where we sort of thing like that were going sort of thing like that. We stopped sort of thing like that and said we were sort of thing like that going sort of thing like that to the river sort of thing like that to fish for red fin.
The student immediately recognised the safety and thinking patterns in his speech and recalled what he was doing/thinking when he used them to deal with the management arm of the mission and bureaucracy in general. He also recognised that these patterns continue to be an integral part of both his everyday speech and for the process of transacting business. They have become an integral part of his urban indigenous voice as he negotiates with education, social security, housing, medical, and a range of other bureaucracies and social and cultural contexts.
Upon witnessing his use of cultural and safety “phrases”, the student experienced an “ah ha’”, Eureka, or “light bulb” moment. He was able to see how his speech could be put into text and easily edited so that it was readily understandable by others. He recognised that if the computer could put his speech into text, safety and thinking phrases could either be suppressed or noted with a strike-through. This would give him a choice of texts. The computer was a tool for mediating and communicating meaning across cultural contexts.
The strike-through process also provided a means of demonstrating to his teachers that he was not illiterate or literacy-inefficient. Rather, it allowed teachers to recognise his dexterity and inventiveness when dealing with and working across complex social and cultural domains/contexts. From this point on, teachers began to see him in a different light. This was not a person who could not speak a coherent phrase; this was a highly accomplished reader of cultural and social contexts who could develop and create stories and communicate them in a manner that was appropriate to ensuring his safety. Once the student and his teachers had gained insight into his way of voicing and communicating his story, he began to experiment by risking to build and communicate intimate stories and arguments that were suitable for a range of audiences. For example, as the strike-through section of transcript was presented to the student, he was able to talk about and
provide other layers of information that detailed the place of social and cultural safety phrases.
The discussion about the phrases then provided an opportunity for the storyteller to provide insights to his process of thinking, acting, and being:
I was walkin’ down the mission, sort of thing like that [thinking pause]
with my mates sort of thing like that [thinking pause feeling his way into the context of the mission]
when we ran into the mission superintendent sort of thing like that [thinking pause continuing to feel his way into the context of the mission and beginning of a safety phrase]
and he sort of thing like that [furthering safety phrase — how much is it safe to divulge to the listener/teacher/transcriber]
asked us sort of thing like that [safety phrase with respect to the listener and the frame of reference — the superintendent]
where we sort of thing like that were going sort of thing like that. [safety pause and contexting continued]
We stopped sort of thing like that [thinking and safety phrase and then decision to provide the next level of information]
We looked at each other, [visually] for hints on what to say [as we built a safe response to the superintendent] because he had the power to cause us all sorts of problems. [In those days the superintendent had the power to withhold rations, determine who could stay on the mission, and much more.] You had to be careful what you said. So we would let little bits of information out and see the superintendent’s reactions and then add some more that we thought was safe. We would also be looking into each others faces [and body language/signals] to check out that we were giving out safe information. Every one of us walking down the mission knew talking with the superintendent could be dangerous [for the people talking and for others referred to.]
and said we were sort of thing like that going sort of thing like that to the river sort of thing like that to fish for red fin.
Now this extra level of information could be built into the story if the teller wished.
The computer makes it easy to incorporate this extra level of information providing you have a safe environment in which someone can utilise a tool to record and put the conversation into text form. The ability and facility to converse, to narrate, tell and record the story with the tip of one’s tongue rather than through one’s finger tips allows the teller to incorporate safety phrases into the text, and then to decide what to do with them.
Decisions on what to do would be influenced by many factors, such as the cultural and social origin and physical location of both teller and listener, and the sense of audience of both.