This article tries to classify context types that are relevant to discourse pragmatics, and investigates the theoretical and practical problems related to attempts to transcribe them. It argues that the infinite quantity of context, relevant to discourse pragmatics, is not capable of transcription; that there is both a theoretical and practical limit to the amount of relevant detail that can be transcribed; and that discourse pragmatics must abandon the claim to completeness and objectivity, inherent in scientific style transcription systems.