Oral History as Communicative Event A Folkloristic Perspective

How do we honestly and carefully study the large proportion of the population who left behind few if any written records? At least part of the reason for the long neglect of Afro-American history, Native American history, the history of women and of various ethnic groups was an historical methodology which failed to provide us with sufficient usable data on such subjects. The great challenge is to develop a more adequate methodology for studying history the bottom up. I believe that folkloristics (a term folklorists use to distinguish the discipline from the material studied) has much to contribute to the development of that methodology and the theory upon which it must stand. Because oral history makes possible the gathering of historical evidence on people who would otherwise be left out of historical study (or treated only statistically), and because oral communication reveals more than written documents, I believe oral history is the most important single method of historical research and should be part of the methodological training of every historian. The historian who is ignorant of oral history, like the historian who still does not comprehend quantification, is only partly trained. But note that I refer to oral history as a method, not as a separate field of history. Oral history should be used in conjunction with other methods of historical inquiry, appropriate to the historical problem under consideration. Studies in oral history, like all historical studies, should begin with statement and analysis of the historical problem to determine what are the relevant data and what are the most effective means of obtaining them.2 Not all historical

Archaeology · Art · Comparative historical research · Epistemology · Folklore · Folkloristics · Genealogy · Historical method · Historiography · Oral history · Perspective (graphical) · Political history · Population · Quantitative history · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Demography · History · Law · Music History and Culture · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis

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