3.8 Analyzing Oral Histories – Creating Local Linkages

Estimated time to complete this section: 7 minutes

The term “oral history” can refer to both formal and informal accounts about the past. For our purposes, oral history is a self-aware, disciplined conversation between two people about either some aspect of the past considered by them to be of historical significance or their personal life history and intentionally recorded for the record.

As the academic practice of oral history developed in the 1940s, most transcripts document the recollections of leaders in business, politics, and social life. By the 1960s and 1970s, however, more oral histories captured the memories of people typically missing in historical narratives. Your library collection may hold both kinds of oral histories in multiple formats: transcripts of oral history interviews, recordings of oral history interviews (either analog or digital), in addition to print anthologies of first-hand stories of the past.

Oral histories can be useful in local history work, as they are sources of new knowledge and perspectives on the community’s past. But the work of oral history is not simply a fact-finding exercise, both the interviewer and narrator are creating an interpretation of the past in the moment.

3.8 Videos

Sa’ida Jurallah’s Oral History: Description of the Source
(Total Video Time = 2:42; transcript available here, see page 1 of pdf)
How Do Students Analyze Sa’ida Jurallah’s Interviews?
(Total Video TIme = 2:30; transcript available here, see page 4 of pdf)

Who Is Talking?
Who is the narrator?	What is the narrator’s relationship to the events under discussion? What stake might the narrator have in presenting their particular version of events? What effect might the narrator’s social identity and position have on the interview? Does the narrator have a prior relationship with the interviewer? How does the narrator present themself in the interview? What influences—personal, cultural, social—might shape the way the narrator expresses himself or herself? What sort of character does the narrator become in the interview?
Who is the interviewer?	What background and interests does the interviewer bring to the topic of the interview? How might this affect the interview? How do the interviewer’s questions shape the story told? Has the interviewer prepared for the interview? How adept is the interviewer in getting the narrator to tell their story in their own way? Does the interviewer have a prior relationship with the narrator? How might this affect the interview? What effect might the interviewer’s social identity and position have on the interviewee, and hence the interview? How might the dynamic between narrator and interviewer effect what is said in the interview?
What Are They Talking About?
What has been said in the interview?	In which languages is the interview conducted? In which languages is the interview presented? How has the narrator structured the interview? What’s the plot of the story? What does this tell us about the way the narrator thinks about his or her experience? What does the narrator avoid or sidestep? What topics does the narrator especially warm to, or speak about with interest, enthusiasm, or conviction? What might this tell us? Are there times when the narrator doesn’t seem to answer the question posed? What might be the reason for this? Are there significant factual errors in the narrative? Is it internally consistent? How might you account for errors and inconsistencies?
Why Are They Talking?
For what purpose has this interview been conducted?	How might the purpose have shaped the content, perspective, and tone of the interview?
What Are the Circumstances of the Interview?
	What technologies are used to record the interview? What shortcomings might those technologies have? Has the interview been edited or altered? What effect might the location of the interview have had on what was said in the interview? If anyone other than the interviewer and interviewee were present, what effect might the presence of this other person have had on the interview? Do you know the mental and physical health of the narrator and interviewer? What effect might these have had on the interview?

adapted from Linda Shopes, “Making Sense of Oral History,” History Matters: The U.S. Survey Course on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/oral/, February 2002.

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