This week’s readings were largely concerned with a “history of oral history,” or the historiography of oral history as both a primary source and a methodology. Two particular issues regarding the history of oral history discussed within the readings—particularly Alessandro Portelli’s “What Makes Oral History Different” and “Oral History” by Louis Starr—piqued my interest and related to some of my own studies in military history.
The first issue deals with the form of oral sources, or the tape versus transcript debate. Generally speaking, two schools of thought exist regarding what should be the primary source of oral history research. First, some believe the “tape” or audio recording of the oral history interview should be the predominant source. This school believes that the “true primary source” (Starr, 42) collected by oral history work is the actual, unedited aural dialogue of the interviewer and interviewee—or narrator, author, speaker, subject, respondent, etc. Arguing that “nuances of voice” such as “accent, inflection, emphasis, or manner” cannot be accurately portrayed through a written transcript and should not be left to the reader’s interpretation (Starr, 42). This group argues for preserving the “orality” of oral sources, likening the usage of a transcript to “doing art criticism on reproductions, or literary criticism on translations” (Portelli, 47). Second, some argue that the written transcript of the oral history should be the primary source. This school places the accuracy and verification of information found within the transcription process as key to the oral history process (Starr, 42–3). The proponents of transcripts also argue that the heightened accessibility and ease of use of transcripts bring them greater research value than the awkward and difficult usage of long tape recordings (Starr, 43). I found this issue to be so interesting because I had never given it any thought, nor even considered it a challenge in the first place. With my limited experience in conducting or using oral history, I figured that either the tape or the transcript would be available to use, or perhaps both at the same time. I suppose I generally leaned towards the transcript school, as I know personally that would be much more convenient for my overall style of research than listening to a long audio recording. The points brought up by the tape school, however, are undeniably valid; the particularities of speech can be immensely insightful and revealing, and transcribing such applies a layer of interpretation that can be counterproductive to a different researcher’s agenda. I do believe that both the tape and transcript should be made available—and used if time permits—to researchers of oral histories, but that runs into the issue of finances.
The second issue revolves around the introduction of oral sources and oral history methodology into the established history academy. Oral history has now become an established and credited methodology of historical research and scholarship, but its introduction to the academy did not please the document purists. Starr’s chapter mentions the unsuccessful introduction of cliometrics to academic history, which reminded me of a similar attempt in military history. A book titled Numbers, Predictions, and War, published in 1978, was authored by Trevor N. Dupuy; Dupuy’s big claim in his work was that he developed a mathematical methodology—called the “Quantified Judgment Method of Analysis of Historical Combat Data” or QJMA—to accurately calculate the combat effectiveness of opposing military forces in an engagement. This methodology contained an equation, the Quantified Judgment Model, that could supposedly empirically prove the on-the-ground effectiveness of military units as well as predict future engagements, with the right data, via the same equation. Dupuy’s attempt to quantify history, similar to cliometrics, did not go very well. I just found it interesting to compare the response of academia to Dupuy’s QJMA and oral history. One of the larger critiques of oral history in its beginnings was that it relied on memory and recollection, two notably unreliable sources (at least compared to written documents, at one point in time). Dupuy’s quantification of history sought to provide a surefire way to analyze and perhaps predict matters of military history, but was rejected for its very fundamental notion being deemed impossible and unreliable as well. Interesting how oral history and the QJMA were on almost the opposite ends of the spectrum, yet both were initially rejected for the same logic.
