This week\u2019s readings were largely concerned with a \u201chistory of oral history,\u201d 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\u2014particularly Alessandro Portelli\u2019s \u201cWhat Makes Oral History Different\u201d and \u201cOral History\u201d by Louis Starr\u2014piqued my interest and related to some of my own studies in military history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first issue deals with the form of oral sources, or the tape versus transcript debate.\u00a0 Generally speaking, two schools of thought exist regarding what should be the primary source of oral history research.\u00a0 First, some believe the \u201ctape\u201d or audio recording of the oral history interview should be the predominant source.\u00a0 This school believes that the \u201ctrue primary source\u201d (Starr, 42) collected by oral history work is the actual, unedited aural dialogue of the interviewer and interviewee\u2014or narrator, author, speaker, subject, respondent, etc.\u00a0 Arguing that \u201cnuances of voice\u201d such as \u201caccent, inflection, emphasis, or manner\u201d cannot be accurately portrayed through a written transcript and should not be left to the reader\u2019s interpretation (Starr, 42).\u00a0 This group argues for preserving the \u201corality\u201d of oral sources, likening the usage of a transcript to \u201cdoing art criticism on reproductions, or literary criticism on translations\u201d (Portelli, 47).\u00a0 Second, some argue that the written transcript of the oral history should be the primary source.\u00a0 This school places the accuracy and verification of information found within the transcription process as key to the oral history process (Starr, 42\u20133).\u00a0 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).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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\u2019s agenda.\u00a0 I do believe that both the tape and transcript should be made available\u2014and used if time permits\u2014to researchers of oral histories, but that runs into the issue of finances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The second issue revolves around the introduction of oral sources and oral history methodology into the established history academy.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Starr\u2019s chapter mentions the unsuccessful introduction of cliometrics to academic history, which reminded me of a similar attempt in military history.\u00a0 A book titled Numbers, Predictions, and War<\/em>, published in 1978, was authored by Trevor N. Dupuy; Dupuy\u2019s big claim in his work was that he developed a mathematical methodology\u2014called the \u201cQuantified Judgment Method of Analysis of Historical Combat Data\u201d or QJMA\u2014to accurately calculate the combat effectiveness of opposing military forces in an engagement.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Dupuy\u2019s attempt to quantify history, similar to cliometrics, did not go very well.\u00a0 I just found it interesting to compare the response of academia to Dupuy\u2019s QJMA and oral history.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 Dupuy\u2019s 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This week\u2019s readings were largely concerned with a \u201chistory of oral history,\u201d 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\u2014particularly Alessandro Portelli\u2019s \u201cWhat Makes Oral History Different\u201d and \u201cOral History\u201d by Louis Starr\u2014piqued my interest and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/17"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.temple.edu\/rb15oralhistoryblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}