The Language of Law School This page intentionally left blank

particular class. Although there was one exception, we generally included only
professors with significant amounts of teaching experience at their law schools, so
as to maximize any influence the institution might have on teaching norms and
styles.
As noted, the classes were first taped and coded by in-class coders. The in-class
coders noted the identity of each speaker in terms of race and gender, whether a
turn was called on or volunteered, and any other particularly salient aspects of the
interaction that might not be captured on tape. For example, in one case a student
responded to a professor’s question by putting her head down on her desk; this
nonverbal response would be noted on the coding sheet. Coders also tracked any
notes the professor put on the board.
The tapes were subsequently transcribed at the American Bar Foundation in
Chicago. Using tapes, transcripts, and in-class coding sheets, each turn in each class
was then coded for the following information:
1. Speaker identity (students were assigned numbers in order to track repeat
players across classes).
2. Speaker gender.
3. Speaker racial identification.
4. Order of appearance number (for each class, students were assigned a number
based on the order in which they spoke in that class).
5. Linguistic type (turns were coded in terms of the kind of speech occurring:
monologue, various kinds of dialogue).
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6. Kind of turn (called on without volunteering, volunteered and called on,
spoke without being called on, etc.; spoken, nonverbal, or silent turn).
7. Length of turn (timed to half of a second).
8. Evaluation (whether the turn contained a positive or negative evaluation of the
preceding turn).
9. Speaker transition type (for turns that overlapped but did not interrupt
previous speech, we coded whether they were facilitative backchannels [as
when someone comments “right,” or “mmm hmm” in the background while a
primary speaker is talking], or other kinds of background comments).
As with the earlier, in-class phase of the project, the transcript coding for each
school was overseen by a single coder.
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 Extensive cross-checking of the coding was
performed by proofreaders who checked the coding sheets, data enterers who en-
tered the coding sheets into the computer, quantitative analysts who performed
the data cleanup and statistical analyses, and the two project managers.
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 We could
and did, on multiple occasions, go back to the tapes and transcripts to double-check

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Study Design, Methodology, and Profile
35
the coding decisions. The professor and student interviews were transcribed as
well. Coders also drew together in-class coders’ notes and their own reports of
the tapes and transcripts to form short written ethnographic accounts of each
class.
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Coding Complexities: The Trouble with Turns
Although this sounds like a great deal of work, nevertheless my description to this
point is deceptively straightforward in comparison with the actual process. Here I
give just a few examples of the complex nuances involved in coding these class-
room exchanges. As with most quantitative analysis, there is frequently a trade-off
involved when we sort the messy stuff of human social interaction into the unre-
alistically neat, but more easily manipulable, categories required for this kind of
work.
For some time now, the field of language studies known as “conversation analy-
sis” has relied heavily on the “turn” as a unit of analysis.
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 By breaking down ex-
changes into turns, conversation analysts have been able to discern crucial aspects
of the sociology of turn-taking and the overall structure of discourse. In the law
school classroom, this approach should be relatively easier to apply than in ordi-
nary conversation, because the structure of turns in these classrooms is, in gen-
eral, relatively formalized. With the professor controlling most of the interaction,
there is a clearer division of labor than in many conversational situations, and the
back-and-forth usually follows a relatively set pattern in which the professor ei-
ther speaks or designates a student to speak. However, even in this relatively struc-
tured speech situation, ambiguities arise.
Let’s start with a fairly common example, an exchange between a professor
and student (both white males). We enter the conversation at turn 20:
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