Professor John Wolford
Missouri Historical Society/UM-St. Louis
Professor Sandy Rikoon
UM-Columbia, Faculty of record
Email: wolfordj@msx.umsl.edu

The Questions he asks (and for you to answer):

Isn't oral history limited by the fallibility of human memory?  (11-12)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

What should interviewers take into consideration about memory?  (12-14)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Don't memories tend to grow nostalgic?  (14-16)

Return to Top

What is the relationship between oral history and folklore?

What distinguishes a "life history" from other interviews?
 
 
 
 

Overview:

• oral history is a viable aspect of academic history
• discusses nature of orality, which is at the heart of the significance of oral history
• claims that the meanings inherent in an oral discourse is more important than the factual content, although that can be probed as well
• in fact, the speaker's subjectivity is "the unique and precious element" of oral history, because it uncovers beliefs, wishes, norms, values, attitudes that shape history
• the discourse on oral history has opened up the subject of the nature of memory, that memory is a creative process of constructing meaning
• in analyzing narrative, the analyst must distinguish between the ironic mode and the epic mode of discourse, modes that seem to characterize many kinds of narrative
• oral history discourse has three elements: variability, artificiality, and partiality; understanding the narrative along these lines is crucial in understanding the meanings lying within the narrative
• ultimately, the historian is the one in control of the oral history, because s/he is in control of the interview and of the documentation

Memories leading to theories

• the "specter of oral history" is haunting academe
• the idea that the orality of oral history will taint the rationality embedded in written history
• the idea that it is not academic

 
• however: "our awe of writing has distorted our perception of language and communication to the point where we no longer understand either orality or the nature of writing itself." (64)
• orality and written history have both peculiar strengths and common traits

The orality of oral sources

• oral sources are best studied, are most integral, as oral sources
• when turned into transcripts, they become aural sources
• a transformation, a translation, occurs, from one sense to another
• sometimes, tapes are even destroyed
• "Expecting the transcript to replace the tape for scientific purposes is equivalent to doing art criticism on reproductions, or literary criticisms on translations." (64)

 
• Interpretation
• origin (information about illiterate peoples whose history may otherwise be lost) and content (material culture, daily life) are not sufficient to distinguish oral history from other kinds of history
• these kinds of information can be derived from other kinds of social history (diaries, letters, even official records)
• Martin Guerre is an example
• FORM can be analyzed as a distinguishing trait for oral history
• paralinguistic aspects of language are heavily weighted with meaning
• rhythm
• changes in rhythm are the norms in speech, whereas regularity is the norm in written language
• tone
• inflection
• pauses, starts and stops
• etc.
• these are not simply philological concerns
• they reveal emotion
• they reveal a narrator's sense of participation in the story
• they reveal how the narrator feels the story affects him/her
• they reveal attitudes of the narrator, which may not be expressed otherwise
• that is: they reveal the internal meaning of the story
• w/out paralinguistic tone and rhythm etc., the narrative is flattened, as in written language

Oral history as narrative

• being told, oral history IS narrative
• therefore, the analysis would best be done using narrative theory

 
• oral sources do not have a particular genre which is dedicated to historical narration
• historical narration may become mixed up in many genres and styles
• folktale
• legend
• myth
• songs
• stereotypes
• between factual and artistic narratives
• factual? deal with events
• artistic? deal with imagination, or feeling
• both can deal with historic material,
• but each would have to be analyzed according to its type
• the more formalized the material within the narrative, the more it is expressive of the collective viewpoint
• formalized: like proverbs
• formalized: more conservative in structure
• the more stylistically idiosyncratic, the more it is expressive of the individual

Events and meaning

• "The first thing that makes oral history different, therefore, is that it tells us less about events than about their meaning." (67)
• this does not mean that they cannot be factual or accretive to historical knowledge
• oral histories implicitly must add to knowledge, since everyone's experience is specific to that individual and no one else can possibly provide that history
• this, of course, assumes that history is to be defined as the whole of society's experiences
• thus, the only problem posed by oral history has to do with verification

 
• What is special about oral history, or about any oral source, is the speaker's subjectivity
• what Portelli calls "the unique and precious element"
• this subjectivity tells the researcher:
• what people did
• what people wanted to do
• what people believed they were doing
• what people now think they were doing

 
• What people believe happen in history is as much a fact "as are the more visible 'facts." (67)
• it provides a psychological and sociological context that otherwise would be absent
• if the beliefs do not correspond with the known facts, then it does not cause the historian to change his or her documented history
• but it would change the interpretation of the effects of those events on the people and the society
• if historians find that certain beliefs predominate among either similar or dissimilar sectors of society, even when those beliefs do not gibe with historical fact, then we recognize a basis for a whole differentially-distinct social consciousness existent within society
• such historical consciousnesses form the basis of social change

Should we believe oral sources?

• "Oral sources are credible, but with a different credibility." (68)
• "The importance of oral testimony may lie not in its adherence to fact, but rather in its departure from it, as imagination, symbolism, and desire emerge." (68)
• "Therefore, there are no 'false' oral sources." (68)

 
• Conversely, written documentation may as well fall into the trap of factual unreliability.
• written sources often paraphrase
• written histories based on oral sources: "According to verbal information taken...."
• legal cases in Italy are always summarized by the judge to a clerk; they do not record the words of the witnesses
• also true of: parliamentary records, minutes of meetings, newspaper interviews
• these sources are used as primary sources by historians, with little question of credibility
• yet they are secondary translations of oral sources
• moreover, they are translations typically from one class to another
• the class bias would definitely color the paraphrase
• Criticism of oral history: distortions of faulty memory, resultant from distance from event

• same criticism could be leveled at much of written history
• memoirs of elites
• even diaries
• journalism
• composite histories, often written by non-participants, and often at a temporal distance
• oral histories actually have some advantages concerning accuracy over written history
• they often compensate for temporal distance by having a much closer personal involvement
• people existing within oral cultures typically have built-in aids to enhance memory
• stories are continually retold
• stories are discussed? and corrected? among members of the community
• formalized narratives help preserve the oral texts
• stylized elements are recognized as stylistic and discounted as style, not as fact
• Another aspect to consider
• In globalized, urbanized world, most narrators are both literate and oral
• this mixture of cultures within an individual will create hybrid styles and information
• "...if many written sources are based on orality, modern orality itself is saturated with writing." (69)
• What is the nature of memory?
• Most historians see memory as "the passive depository of facts" (69)
• contrarily, it is "an active process of creation of meanings." (69)
• NOTICE: It is a process
• it is creative
• it produces meaning
• a narrator's changes in historical events through memory formation is:
• an "effort to make sense of the past and to give a form to their lives, and set the interview and narrative in their historical context." (69)
• the historian should focus on the changes to derive the meaning
• the historian should also recognize the interview as just one version in a stream of reconceptualizing the past for the interviewee
• two modes of narrative are often invoked by narrators
• irony
• "where two different ethical (or political or religious) and narrative standards interfere and overlap, and their tension shapes the telling of the story." (69)
• e.g.: The autobiography of Malcolm X, where the narrator assesses his early years by his religious and political consciousness of the present
• this one is more typical, perhaps
• epic
• where the past is incorporated into the present ethical consciousness as a continuation? typically when one has been caught up in a "climactic moment," such as a social movement or a revolution or a war
• these narrative modes should be accounted for in interpreting an oral history
• Another consideration: what is not said, what is hidden, should be considered as important as what is said
• people typically will have aspects of their lives they do not want to talk about
• illegal activities
• unethical acts
• embarrassments
• even acts they thought were ethical or right in the past they now may consider otherwise
• as people become more conservative with time, they may consider their liberal acts or opinions of an earlier time unmentionable
• [On the other hand, factual reliability does not fall only in the province of written documentation.
• the writerly historian may be unreliable as well, for a variety of reasons]

Objectivity

• Simply: oral sources are not objective
• they have three intrinsic traits; they are:
• artificial
• variable
• partial

 
• Oral testimony as artificial
• they are always constructed
• by the interviewee, as he or she remembers and construes his or her life in this particular contextual situation
• by the interviewer, who comes in with some predetermined assumptions, and then by his or her conducting of the interview
• the interviewer
• decides there is to be an interview
• decides whom to interview
• decides what questions to ask
• responds in certain ways to the interviewee's responses
• by the interviewer and interviewee together, as they dance the oral history dance
• call and respond one to the other
• how to alleviate the artificial aspect of interviews, to some degree
• don't be so rigid in asking questions
• allow narrators to talk about what they want, not what you think they should talk about
• try to obtain representative numbers of a community to interview
• try to obtain a cross section of the community

 
• Oral testimony is always variable
• the narrator never tells the same history the same way twice
• true of all oral genres
• differences come from:
• something as slight as different intonations and other paralinguistic effects
• changes in wording, or in nuance
• changes in response to the interviewee, even if it is the same one
• changes in the narrator's consciousness
• life goes on, from one interview to the next, so new experiences that can change a person can happen
• a prior interview could have awakened memories that could influence later reconstructions
• Oral history is always partial
• REMEMBER: this is true of all histories, all narratives
• "It is impossible to exhaust the entire memory of a single informant" (71)
• moreover, no single informant can give an entire history of any event or subject
• no finite groups of informants can do this either
• but again, this is true of all histories, not just oral histories

 
• A question arises:
• If oral histories are inherently artificial, variable, and partial, why do them?
• wouldn't these flaws skew more than elucidate?

Who speaks in oral history?

• Ultimately, it is the historian who is in control
• the oral historian does not discover new texts? s/he co-creates them
• it is no longer a passive, academic venture
• oral history is by nature and by act an active intellectual enterprise

 
• Oral history departs from the imputed traditional impartiality of the historian
• the oral historian is partial
• partial in the sense that he only creates partial history
• partial in the sense that s/he does take sides, is biased, is subjective
• "...because the sides exist in the telling." (73)

Overview:

• an oral history session is but one moment in a stream of storytelling? a point in the process
• subject matter, mostly: the IWW strike of lumberjacks in 1917 in Idaho and the surrounding areas of eastern Washington and western Wyoming
• three aspects of oral history can be quarried for social analysis: 1) the position of the narrator in relationship to the event; 2) comparisons and contrasts between tellers concerning the same event; and 3) categories used by the teller in both the individualizing and the generalizing of the event
• discusses the importance of "point of view" as an analytic device to understand the social relationships between people and the events surrounding and engulfing them
• the process of storytelling is a process of working out the meanings inherent in an experience
• agreements in storytelling events among people indicate a bounded community of value and attitude; divergences indicate a border between people of different values and attitudes
• any story must be understood in the context of other stories told within the community, whether they seem related or not (e.g.: the 1917 IWW strike and migration stories, while seemingly unconnected, may imply one another in their narrative structure, sensibilities, values, worldview, etc.).
• suggests that the connectedness of unique stories with other kinds of stories with broader descriptions and generalizations justifies the belief that oral history is a distinctive communicative genre
• his broad point is that personal and cultural conceptions of the past are interdependent

I. [Intro]

• "[...]. the oral historian is an intervener in a process that is already highly developed." (284)
• commonly, people think that the oral history is "the" document, the authoritative telling of an event that preserves an individual's memory of it
• however, all people recreate their tellings in a new context
• the document is not simply the individual's, but is a co-creation of the individual with the interviewee and with his/her past and future, and with her/his society
• "...accounts begin and evolve in the course of social life and come to listeners, researchers, and readers bearing the imprint of earlier interactions." (285)
• it is always in the process of formation, and is never finished
• this preconception of a final document is based on written literature, where the text is stable and unchanging

 
• "What the oral historian does is to provide a new context for the telling of mainly preexistent narrative and then to tape what is said so that parts of it can be separated and utilized later in yet other contexts.[...]" (285)

• three aspects of oral history can be quarried for social analysis:

• uses the literary device of point of view as his point of entry for analysis

II. [The narrator and the event]

• Point of view:
• reveals both the individualistic and the social aspect of a narrative
• definition: "...the complicated relationship between the narrator and the events described." (285)
• reveals relationships between narrator and others involved or not involved in the narrative
• reveals relationship between narrator and the social structure, social values, social norms
• the different points of view within any narrative reflects different opinions, different roles
• "As the point of view moves with the flow of narration, it traces human relationships." (287)

 
• "By entering for a moment into the perspectives of others, listeners get to feel the social relationships that are inscribed in events. Oral historians, by working to recover these messages and their import can better understand what the narratives they hear are really about." (288)

III. [Relationship between narrators and their stories]

• Point of view in one narrative is an important point of convergence or divergence when compared to other narratives involving the same people or the same events
• will point out similarities and differences among people, social classes, roles, events themselves, other individuals
• certain themes will arise or be left out, both of which would be analytically significant
• if the themes are common enough, they may become standardized into a traditional mode, which embodies a whole set of beliefs and values
• such as stories of migration from another country
• the process of storytelling is a process of working out the meanings inherent in an experience
• agreements in storytelling events among people indicate a bounded community of value and attitude; divergences indicate a border between people of different values and attitudes
• "the challenge for oral historians is to recognize significant instances of agreement and disagreement in testimonies and to trace their distribution." (293)
• "This patterning of sentiments is direct evidence of the way feelings have been structured within the society." (293)
• however, it is important not to oversimplify the analysis
• any one event, no matter how monumental for the community, must be assessed in terms of the larger community history
• any event must be assessed not only in its own telling, but also in how much its narrative is woven into other narratives or other genres that maintain circulation within the society

IV. [Categories]

• Oral histories encompass a spectrum of types of stories about events
• at one end would be the singular, unique event
• at the other end, stories that are broadly general: "theorizing which attempts to encompass a potentially unlimited number of instances." (295)
• in between are different levels of grouping together of events, or generalizing

 
• Stories and other kinds of statements are mutually implicative. They challenge and check, suggest and require each other. A story exemplifies a class of experiences; a description hints at the existence of innumerable plots." (297)
• how descriptions and generalizations connect to stories "justifies the belief that 'oral history' is a coherent way of conceptualizing reality, a single genre of talk." (297)

V. [Conclusion]

• his broad point is that personal and cultural conceptions of the past are interdependent

• in order to understand this unified interdependence, one has to become immersed in the "realm where the narratives have come into being, interpenetrated, and continued to exist." (297)

Outline:

•  Introduction
• focus on "reminiscence" in British Isles in 1960s, 1970s and 1980s
• focus on older people and the deep past
• focus on three pioneering fields: psychology, history, & community publishing

• Oral history origins
• began in GB when scholars and others realized that huge segments of society were being left out of the "official" historical record--1960s--especially:
• women
• various types of minorities
• deviant groups
• also realized was that huge content areas were also being ignored
• family life
• old age
• social customs
• working life
• neighborhoods
• community
• undocumented events, typically on a local scale
• by 1970s, a greater understanding that oral history is a two way process, what has become known as a shared authority

• Community publishing origins
• began in 1970s in GB
• the public ravenously read local histories and autobiographies that reflected their own lives, their own experiences, their own values and worldviews
• Examples of people writing: dressmaker, shoemaker, cab driver
• writers are working class people, everyday people with everyday experiences and attitudes
• a segment that has historically been neglected or ignored by "official" history
• supported by publishing concerns, libraries, museums, local governments, private organizations and companies, charitable trusts, and eventually, the central government
• a famous sponsoring group is Centerprise Publishing Project

• Psychology of old age origins
• 1960s, 1970s--interest in understanding the elderly's tendency to reminisce on their earlier life
• prior to this point, such reminiscence was seen as pathological and self-destructive
• "life review" concept developed by Robert Butler (1963)
• when people, who reach retirement or an age where they see themselves as no longer productive, begin to look back over their lives through memory and organize their lives' events so that their lives make sense
• people's memories become very sharp at this point
• the process is really a reconstruction, not necessarily a factual remembering
• among historians and others, called "life history"
• [highly influential movement--the popular (and incorrect) perception of oral history to this day is that it needs to focus on the elderly--JBW]
• [in fact, each age phase has its own style and function for remembering, so longitudinal studies are far more important to perform, in order to understand the memory process and people's lives better--JBW]

• The emergence of Recall
• Recall, a tape/slide show produced by an agency called Help the Aged, November 1981
• huge commercial success in GB that captured the popular imagination
• allowed people to understand that anyone, with proper training and technology, can do an oral history
• allowed people to understand that oral history allows people to remember their past through an open-ended format
• rather than simply answering a survey-type questionnaire

• Reminiscence: a movement
• the movement came with the parallel and intersecting interests of historians, psychologists, community publishers, and the popular success of Recall
• the popular way to refer to the movement is reminiscence work, which implies a therapeutic function and goal

• Reminiscence: the debate about therapy
• no strong clinical case exists supporting the statistically significant therapeutic effect of oral history on those elderly with highly impaired mental facilities
• the use of the term therapy may be too strong
• reminiscence work definitely does seem to work as an adjunct process in other kinds of therapy
• [nonetheless, it does have a distinctly reaffirming effect on interviewees, which any oral historian can see--JBW]

• Reminiscence: work in residential homes and hospitals
• "Successful reminiscence work relies less on the accurate remembering of the past and more on the process of exchange and listening" between people reminiscing, the oral historians documenting the reminiscences, and any caretakers. (p. 198)
• in many caretaking facilities (nursing homes, etc.) memory work has become a routine activity, like bingo, which tends to make the remembering but also the memories seem trite, childish, unimportant

• Other people's learning
• focuses on social work

• Understanding issues facing some older people
• focuses on social work