[inaudible].
1: This is the recording of the 14th annual oral history association colloquium.
The following session is investigating the oral interview method or madness.
Moderator is Ronald Jake really of the New Jersey historical commission
communication in the oral history interview investigating the problems of
interpreting oral data is presented by eco pepper Clark,
University of Alabama at Birmingham and Dale Newman of the University of
Pittsburgh. This session was recorded on Saturday,
October 27th,
1979 at 10 30 in the morning by staff person of the forest Depot oral history
Institute at my state university.
This recording is on both sides.
0: [inaudible]
2: we had a panel on the oral interview method or madness. And before we do,
I just liked to sketch out a bit of a brief history RB paper you'll be hearing
today because the history itself has some interesting implications for uh,
I first came in contact with the project at the University of Alabama last may
or June, I believe a year ago,
may or June when I received the call and a very pleasant Southern boys that
liked to go to Alabama. Uh, to me kind of a surprise.
And for those of you who've known me,
you can imagine the kind of cultural shock that that involved,
but I should be at Alabama. The last time I'd been stopped,
I think it was as an outside agitator. Uh,
and I was told that this came with the recommendation of Wadi Moore,
the then president of the oral history association,
a fellow who had already put me on the hot seat as program chairman and manna.
Uh, and I talked briefly please, the person on the phone,
and they began to talk to me in terms of questions that they posed about,
uh, envelopes of sound. By that time,
I was so intrigued that anybody in Alabama would read that book that I could
hardly resist going down. Uh,
I agreed to do this evaluation other than any H, uh, uh,
pirate educational
consultation on a private education consultation grant from the NEH as part of
the value of two procedures and then descended the paper and enormous amount of
paperwork. I went down to Alabama, uh,
with administered around Alabama with an efficiency not match since the first
battle of bull run, I guess. Um, we, uh,
but more important than, uh,
than that I came into contact with what I believe to be one of the most
significant projects working in the field of oral history methodology.
Uh, I was very impressed with the group. Uh, they,
the way they meshed. I was very impressed.
The kinds of questions they were asking about what an oral interview is,
what is the nature of historical conversation and I suppose at the heart of it,
what is the nature of history? Um,
I gave them very high marks on that grant and also began sending other people
down and I believe my friend Charlie mercy Annamarie Trager and Paul Thompson
have had on my recommendation try to through Tuscaloosa,
while they may not share some of my particular enthusiasms,
all of them have agreed that the questions being posed are important questions.
And the methods being outlined are significant methods for the faith in the
field of oral history.
The fact that the project did not receive further funding from the national
endowment for the humanities who was an indication of our problem with the NEH
more than it is with the, uh, the nature of the project.
I think we're that kind of an introduction and putting that in the paper you
will get in that kind of context are just not after a caveat.
The taper, you have Mitch dairy,
there's probably a very snare part of the research matrix that makes up the
project. It will be delivered by he called pepper Clark,
who is the backbone of the project.
He is not currently chairman of the communications arts department at the
University of Alabama in Birmingham. Uh, he is vice president.
President is elected the forensic division of the speech communications
association,
who is a graduate PhD graduate of the University of North Carolina where he
studied under George Tyndall. Uh,
most of us will recognize George as really the founding imagination timing North
Carolina oral history program. Uh, he is, uh,
the author of a dissertation on Francis Warrington, Dawson,
a South Carolinian I believe, uh, which will soon be published.
Try the University of Alabama press.
3: Any words of warning before I get into the paper itself?
Some of you perhaps know that, uh, back in the middle ages,
uh, teaching and learning, uh,
took place in an atmosphere where the lecturers spoke at a pace in which the
audience or the students that take a verbatim transcript of the lecture.
Now verbatim that's will become important in the paper later on.
But I do want do want to remind you early on or warn you that I will not be
speaking at that pace in order to get the paper in the appropriate time limits.
Man, another two in thirst. They're ruling in the 13th century.
When they moved from the verbatim lecture a little bit greater Steed,
they made a requirement that any student who in order to oppose this statute
themselves or by means of their servants and followers should shout or whistle
or stamp their feet would be excluded from the faculty for one year.
So by the reach of seed, you do not completely understand,
do not whistle or stamp your feet. Uh,
just know that there are copies of this paper up here later on, uh,
about those properties.
Let me also say that they were stencilled and Greg Hayes.
Then there are a number of typographical errors that may make me appear
illiterate. Uh, I hope you will read them charitably.
Second thing I would say is as Ron indicated, uh,
this work is about a part of a larger work.
We had applied for funding through the national endowment for the humanities to,
uh, support our work in investigating new oral history interview.
And at the time I agreed to do this, uh, proposal that, uh, our, this program,
that proposal looked pretty good any age. Couple of weeks later,
decided it did not look so good and, uh, denied funding.
However, I decided that we could proceed, uh,
based on the theories that underlay the original proposal and based on my
experience of teaching a two semester sequence under the paradigm affirming Unix
and, uh,
therefore I will be offering a number of probes based on that experience.
And so doing, I, I, I offer them with, uh,
some misgivings that were perhaps that's expressed by John [inaudible] and his
introduction to the great crash. And I loved his line when he wrote,
writing is a long and lump-sum business back of the problems and thoughts and
composition. However,
always the powerful questions is this the page that shows the empty shell here
and now they find me out.
So with those misgivings I launch on the project,
final thing I would say by way of Procore marks is that, uh,
in the best Southern tradition, I have my family here with me.
And if any one of the questions turn to a hostile nature and the end of this
program,
you may get a polite but firm note suggesting an affair of honor.
So watch his questions. When this is over,
there will be other respondents and you can direct them to those folks.
Last spring, uh,
my students and I were trying to go over the general impact of having a two
semester program under the NEH pilot.
And we were constantly confronted by what I think we're all historians confront
on a, uh, almost day to day basis.
And that is the general reaction that people have to transcripts.
And as we all know, that reaction is that's not me.
Uh, it's a problem that we encounter the editing stage and it is to be hoped.
We typically overcome it.
But in asking the question or raising the issue, that's not me.
We were caused to ask,
is it the case that it is not then are they correct in their observation?
It's not me.
And to that in this paper addresses some remarks following the Lou Martin
Heidegger phenomenologists have argued that true scholarship is always governed
by those methods which enable the scholar to move toward the object under vet
investigation to move toward the thing itself.
And yet if I may be forgiven the fallacy of wholeness or the stories of work,
the great confusion in this basic principle of scholarship by substituting
magnetic tape or the medium for the thing itself,
which is conversation or the message.
One cannot find an oral historian who will not boast of all histories,
time honored status as a method of historical recreation,
but beneath the boast lurks the suspicion that oral history was not truly born
until the advent of the tape recorder.
This prejudice was reflected recently in a review of such as us,
the writer observed that because these life histories were collected by field
workers for the federal writers project without benefit of the tape recorder.
The major question underlying the book for the modern practitioner of what old
history concerns their accuracy conceding that the interviews had the ring of
authenticity.
The reviewer nonetheless made it unmistakably clear that tapes would have made
the talk more authentic. Under this persuasion,
the tape comes to stand for the conversation itself.
Would the only debate centering on whether the tape or the transcription should
be considered the primary document under this view?
Distortion given a skilled interviewer is a problem that begins in the movement
from tape to tight and continues through subsequent interpretations of the
document
and yet recognizable and manageable distortion clearly begins with the transfer
of conversation from its natural setting to the magnetic media.
I am not concerned with the distortion that may be traced back even further to
be for psychological and situational limitations and I am concerned with what
happens to conversation as it is talked out and becomes the property of the
interviewer and interviewee is at this point that we have the ability if we have
the will to analyze and treat distortion as when historian moves from talk to
tape type each step.
Rob's the original conversation of it's me.
What starts as an extended verbal and nonverbal metaphor of historical
recreation winds up etched in a medium excites in the mind of a reader the need
for certain grammatical forms and logical sequencing,
but alarms and sequences that can never recapture the dynamic qualities of the
original talk and he,
especially at that talk is taken from its natural setting and transposed
verbatim. It is not surprising.
Then the interviewees frequently react sharply when they find their intended
meaning to reduce or distorted in the movement to take.
This reaction is heightened further by an intuitive feeling that the tape is a
technological guillotine which severs the individual and his her from his or her
own words.
I recently attended a family get together back to family in which the kinds of
conversation momentarily centered on a grandchild.
The grandmother remarked with the little that little John Walt had been running
around nursery school asking everybody their name, red,
refusing to give his own. What I find a great act said. Yeah,
that's like the Indians who believes. What if you told someone your name,
you surrendered your power to them. The ant was right.
The little boy may have intuited that as long as he retained his name,
no one could order him around that.
Any communication with him would have to be direct,
personal and involved that watch words left his mouth in this instance,
his name,
others could command his attention at a distance without any personal
involvement,
and yet what the little boy feared is precisely what happens in more dramatic
form when words fell from the magnetic tape to be rendered for public
consumption. Absent the continuous control of the sleeker,
the phenomenon described here has been called and other contexts, technological,
amputation or fitting characterization of what occurs when we extend ourselves
through a technological medium and thereby cutting that part of ourselves off
from personal control.
Each of us as authors have experienced the dread of releasing our words with the
scrutiny of others,
how much Miller dread must be experienced by those who has been fucked.
Their speech without the privilege of controlling their words through the craft
of writing such a broad technological amputation involving as it so often does.
The sensitive subject matter of a life history is bound to induce a state of
shock for the interviewee. In addressing this phenomenon,
Marshall McLuhan compared the shock to the numbness experienced by Narcissus.
I'm confronting the amputated image of himself in the pool,
even though the nom to God did not realize it wasn't himself.
He saw
still we persist and confusing the techniques with the thing itself.
The confusion may be explained in part by a narcotic and fast infatuation where
the various technological extensions of ourselves and by a resulting of ability
to objectify ourselves in history.
David Lufkin and an analysis of Jocko Laurel and the logic of technology offers
a clue as to why we have placed so much faith in the tape recorded word.
He contends that our faith in the veracity of media in general to bring us the
news of the world has created the illusion that truth is verbatim.
It is for this reason,
loved and continues that news broadcasts will often feature the author of a
particular statement or a cutting from that author,
no matter how trivial or how important,
instead of presenting a broadcast or summary of the statement and in fact
verbatim,
this is used to create an illusion of authenticity by fostering the illusion
that truth is verbatim.
Lumpkin sees us as distancing ourselves from the responsibility of involved
judgment. For example, he writes,
there was great reluctance that reluctance to judge Nixon's involvement in
Watergate until the famous tapes could be heard,
and ironically it is likely that Nixon was driven to tape himself by this very
same logic, convinced this. He was,
that he was making history at every moment of his presidential career.
He was in fact making tapes which had become history and it is precisely this
distance from judgment that leads some oral.
The story ends under the guise of objectivity to best faith in the verbatim this
of a transcript or a tape as the reviewer of such as us approvingly expressed
it.
The tape recorder has obviously allowed the modern interviewer to become less a
part of the final transcript than was previously possible.
That's where we fall into the modern trap of assuming that if something has
objective form,
it can scientifically stand for the subjective and inner subjective realm of
experience.
The objective back to the tape and its words are necessary to conduct the
president, not the truth of reality, which lies behind the tape.
And there's justification for this and we will argue at labor assurance.
Moreover,
we even falsely convict Nixon on the mistaken belief that the jumble of words
which pass for conversation reflected the ungrammatical markings of base
intelligence.
Forgetting or not knowing that a verbatim rendering of our heroes would
objectively evoked for similar reaction and lose the same scientific trap that
makes us as oral historians love the objectively manipulable manipulable tape
because it offers a relative ignoring or sliding our own involvement in the
process of
recreation to avoid the illusion that we can discover talk in its technique.
That conversation is the technique.
It is necessary to begin by rejecting the notion that conversation can be
verbatim and thereby eyes were arrived at an understanding of our own
interactional involvement in the creation of an oral history.
We must not only understand how conversation is preferred,
but we must proceed from an understanding of what allows conversation itself to
exist,
what our talking to each other presupposes of the philosophical theoretical
level to articulate the advantages of such an examination. It is necessary.
First to define the type of oral history we would set subject to investigation
and second to suggest an approach to the problem which uses hermeneutics,
the study of interpretation as a theoretical stance.
Now we all come up with definitions of oral history and I'll try to get through
this section very rapidly. Uh, most recently, uh,
bill Moss turned his attention to that subject and that's a good definition is
skinny, I'm sure.
But there are several postulates within the definition of oral history that I
would like to highlight now,
offer my own definition and then move into how I would propose we study it.
Well, history must not be understood as simply another form of historical
investigation requiring customary procedures for testing evidence.
Ensure if we applied customary proceedings for procedures for testing evidence.
We deal with the doc document after it is fixed and not as it comes into being
through conversation. The most apparent difference
is that the evidence originates in an act of oral communication, not in writing.
Yon.
Ben Cena has pointed to this phenomenon and has made good remarks about it and
you've all read that Heinz drugs got him or he elaborates on this fundamental
distinction between writing and speaking.
When he notes writing has the methodological advantage that it presents the
hermeneutical interpretational problem in all its purity,
detached from everything psychological but got him are also finds writing to be
correspondingly disadvantaged when contrasted with thorough conversation,
namely that no one can come to the aid of the written word if it falls victim to
misunderstanding, intentional or unintentional.
It is the prospect of coming to the aid of understanding through speech and
counter speech that gives oral history its unique properties.
Unlike written testimony,
the historical evidence derived through conversation is a joint intellectual
product.
The historian as interviewer becomes an active agent in the creation of an
historical record. The interview read provides the air lateness,
the lived through experience of a past event.
It is the interaction of interviewer and the interviewee bringing with them
conflicting perspectives that gives the interview it's creative potential that
their perspectives necessarily conflict is given with the fact that all
potential interviewees operate with within the framework of a lower assumptions
often articulated that govern actions.
It follows then that the oral historian representing alternative perspectives
based on the various lowers of the story I and personal experience will
necessarily induce conflict through the act of questioning our conflict which
gives the oral history interview.
It's dialectical potential under these conditions.
It becomes the beauty of the oral historian to articulate this conflict in such
a way as to allow the interviewee to speak his or her mind.
This is accomplished when the historian succeeds in making problematic the taken
for granted perspectives of the interviewee without allowing his own biases to
intrude. Last, the definition.
Oral history may be defined as the process whereby an historian seeks to create
historical evidence through conversation with a person who is widely experienced
as being memorable.
The process involves the understanding and interpreting of a past event in such
a way as to sediment. Its meaning at a given point in time
that we should focus our attention on the conversation as a communicated.
That is by no means a new idea. Several years ago,
Ron Greeley observed that the oral transcript cannot be divorced from the
circumstances of its creation.
Which of necessity is one of audience participation and face to face
confrontation? Well,
the reason Charles Joyner or its members of the association to see the oral
history interview as a communicated event not comprehensible apart from social
interaction and intimately bound up with the changing values and institutions of
a changing society to frame the kinds of questions asked by Greeley and joiner
or even to conduct reflective analysis and teaching of the oral history
interview requires that one adopt inappropriate philosophical theoretical base
for approaching the problem.
So that's your foundation for research and teaching may be found in the paradigm
of hermeneutics.
Hermeneutics theorists concern themselves with the fundamental question of
rhetoric.
That is how we come to know the world in a meaningful way and so doing.
They explore the fundamental relationship between understanding interpretation
and meaning.
Hermeneutic theories begin with the premise that a human understanding of
existence can be experienced only through the universal phenomenon of human
linguistic Calfee language.
That is the only way we're going to understand existence is through language and
that within any particular culture,
language functions as those linguistic possibilities that is the available
combination of [inaudible] at any given moment in a culture that shape a
culture's understanding of itself at any moment in time.
Another way,
if words were believed having to lie about us in our infancy, Herman,
you'd assist,
would argue language to be the surrounding misery of our infancy and the cloud.
We trail into an understanding of existence.
So they see us simply as coming into a world surrounded by language.
Those of you working in linguistics understand generally that idea probably
better than I understand that idea, but uh, that's, that's the point.
Since our understanding of reality is a function of language,
then it follows that the act of interpretation is the way we prefer or actualize
those linguistic possibilities through thinking, speaking and writing.
That is the way we tap the language and use it less at any moment in time.
This three projects toward us,
a universe of linguistic possibilities for understanding our existence.
That is our culture provides us with a length until we act upon those
possibilities, they are said to remain in a potential or silent state.
Once we select from among those possibilities and a communicating act,
the process of interpretation is said to it begun and the potential for creating
new meaning is present.
The meaning that's constructed and its relationship to future understanding
ultimately depends on the communicating performance which for the oral and his
story and is not to be found in a facsimile, but in the conversation itself
we can now see why one frequently encounters the term hermeneutical slash.
Historical. Indeed the two cannot be separated.
The oral history interview itself is hermeneutical in nature or it is a
communicated and in which both the interviewer and the interviewee are concerned
primarily with interpreting an historical phenomenon so that it may be
understood in a meaningful way by using hermeneutics is the theoretic stance.
We're examining what takes place in an oral history interview.
The historian is rescued from the fallacy of objectifying history and is better
able to see history as an ongoing process of interpretation.
Historical documents do not speak.
They must be spoken for a process that Gerhard Ebeling describes as saying the
same thing in a different way and precisely by saying it in a different way to
say the same thing. If by way of pure repetition.
Evelyn concludes where were to say the same thing that was said 2000 years ago.
We would only be imagining that we were saying the same thing.
While actually we would be saying something quite different that simply to
repeat is not to interpret.
Simply to repeat is not to say the same thing.
So the whole historical process as we understand it is an ongoing process of
interpretation that I am arguing begins in the creation of the conversation goes
back to the talk itself
before proceeding to the model that hermeneutics enables us to construct where
the caution is in order
to see this story as an ongoing process of interpreting and Tufts of
understanding is not to abandon and objective pass in favor of a subjective
present.
Any active interpretation to be true to historical scholarship must be concerned
directly with the historical phenomenon itself.
That is not with an interviewee's intended meaning,
but with what the intended meaning is about.
That is what the conversation relates to.
Only the historical phenomenon has priority concerning its true meaning.
Okay.
To the model as a hermeneutical situation.
The oral history interview may be represented the manically as having four
distinct but interdependent hermeneutical relationships.
The first relationship is that between the interviewer represented byX on the
model and the interviewee Y second,
the relationship between the interviewer X and the historical phenomenon which i
s represented byZ on the model. The phenomenon to be interrupted.
There is a relationship between the interviewee why and the historical
phenomenon,Z and fourth,
the interdependent relationship between interviewer X and interviewee Y and his
horrible,
4: namely the whole kitten caboodle may be better than if I just tried to explain
here without relieving breeding. Here
we have this relationship X and Y between interviewer and interviewee Y which
taking place in the present, which is a given some chronic moment in time.
The see is the event.
That's what this whole thing is about and there are a number of relationships
here.
X definitely has a relationship with Z through historiography or through actual
experience.
Why the interviewee definitely has an experience with the most likely a lived
through the experience that you're interested in.
There is then the relationship between C and X and Y.
All together we see as the synthetic quality I'll be interviewing.
Let me explain some other things in the model right now.
The line that's unbroken lines.
This point represents the temporal distance of historical tradition beginning
with Z.
The event or the phenomenon under investigation and proceeding down to the
present.
The broken line going on out represents future possibilities of interpretation.
The broken lines that each long allot that they point in along the temporal line
represent those moments whereZ ,
whereupon Z has been or where people have reflected upon Z.
Each time they reflect upon Z,
they deposit some new meaning of Z or the event along this line.
Now
the dots in here represent what the hermeneutic theories is called.
Linguistic possibility is that he has the language as conducted to us in our
culture.
These language possibilities lie silent until we act upon them.
And this line in here represents simply the way people have acted upon
linguistic possibilities at points in time to explain Z,
which of course determines the meaning of the event throughout this time.
So each time the event is reflected upon certain linguistic possibilities are
performed to interpret the event and that's the events life continues through
the subsequent interpretations.
All of which we understand generally is historiography.
Each time we reflect upon it,
we reflect upon it with new word choices that are available to us in our
culture. And thus we understand more OBS,
the and or less of the as a result of that and the interviewer and interview me
are trap down here in a moment in time in which they are going to now exercise
certain linguistics or word choices to again reflect upon the event.
It is an ongoing process.
I think there is one other overriding element that is not represented here and
that is the nature of the idea of the audience because clearly X and Y have a
relationship to a larger audience because it is understood that they are
speaking for the record. And if you speak for the record,
there's the consciousness of the otherness or the larger audience and that is
not well represented on that model. Unless the, uh,
future projection on the broken line there would be taken to mean that.
So those are the barriers,
relationships that occur within the interview situation,
which enables us to understand how word choices or linguistic possibilities
you're going to be tapped in order to recreate a meaning of the event.
Doctor hermeneutical conversation.
Got him a reason means to allow oneself to be congested by the object to which
the parties in the conversation are directed.
It requires that one does not try to out argue the other person,
but that one really considers the weight of the other's opinion and your oral
history interviews. This premise must be adhered to rigorously,
although the oral historian may have an expert knowledge concerning the
traditional conceptions of what the historical phenomenon signifies.
It is the interviewee's interpretation of his or her lived experience that
provides a potentially new dimension of meaning about the historical phenomenon.
That's the oral historian must not let his or her knowledge cloud what the
interviewee may reveal about the meaning of the phenomenon of primary importance
to the oral historian is not the interviewee's interpretation,
but this interpretation is a foul
that's,
it raises the question of how we conduct this kind of open communication.
Theorists would answer this question by centering on the dialectical process
inherent in conversation.
Such an approach reveals four levels through which meaning is constructed and
friends form.
The first level is the overall embracing communicated interaction.
Listening is defined in the oral history interview by the face to face
interaction and it is in this face to face interaction that's conflict develops
and is inherent to the interview conflict.
We defined here to be the recognition by both the interviewer and the
interviewee of a lack of agreement in their separate understandings,
interpretations and meanings of any feature of the event.
Thus conflict is natural in the interview.
It is inherent in the interview and by that don't take that to mean shock,
argumentative conflict.
It simply indicates that different perspectives are being brought to bear and it
is not as different person.
Differing perspectives that give the dialectical uh,
yeah, just throw us within the interview itself.
Now the conflict that is always present in the interview will manifest itself in
two ways. First is contradiction.
Contradiction. I've got another graphic displays.
Eviction occurs when the interviewer and the interviewee reified their separate
understandings, interpretations and meanings of any feature of Z.
The general form of contradiction is that the interviewer will affirm his or her
perspective and that the interview he went up from his or her perspective and
the disagreement is not resolved.
The appearance of agreement could result if acquiescence were present,
but acquiescence is itself another form of contradiction.
Thus contradiction simply does not resolve the conflict.
It's interesting that a colleague of mine who's been doing some preliminary work
on this finds more instances of contradiction and an interview then of a
phenomenon we're going to discuss in a moment called country riot,
which surprised me greatly. I thought that, uh,
we were all conducting our interviews in a very open spirit and we're resolving
everything, but apparently at certain levels,
contradiction tends to manifest itself more than the second phenomenon,
which I'm coming to now, which is con for rioty
cause variety occurs when both X and Y interviewer and interviewee maintain
their separate understandings, interpretations, and meanings of the event.
By acknowledging the potential validity of the other's perspective,
the general forearms of Contra rioty, he ended up here,
manifested in the final week.
We find in Contra rioty and the ability to yield to the others were on view and
to give up one's on or if you don't like world you use the term perspective,
which I would prefer there to world view.
The final transformations of Contra rioty are evidence in a true synthesis of
meetings,
which is why we often wind up with or at least hoping to wind up with out of the
dialectic of the oral history interviews and that is where something is taken
from both perspectives and creates an entirely new or synthetic product.
At any rate,
these structured sets of con for rioty and contradiction.
If you were taking interview and charted out and take its infrastructure out,
it could be charted along these lines and you can begin to see the way that
conflict manifests itself in their view and ultimately sets up new
interpretations, understandings and meanings.
[inaudible]. The final thing that I would say,
well there are a couple of things before I'm saying final about these charts and
graphs which
0: [inaudible]
4: he has that frequently interview.
We will move to a level of contradiction if that is recognized as such.
We moved back to the level of conflict and then moved down through [inaudible]
to deposit. Uh,
me and one of the instances meaning are the understanding and meaning of the
event will be deposited.
Contradiction will year results but yields results at a,
in a truncated manner if you will.
Whereas Contra rioty will yield results that are more synthetic and perhaps
productive,
a more new meaning about the event under discussion.
This all occurred through various conversational loops that occur in the
interview and uh,
almost any issue that sets up in the interview will likely go through those
patterns or those forms. Finally,
I would say that the model here illustrates that each issue is really a subset
of the larger event.
The whole energy will express itself in a spirit of an express itself in
conflict, contradiction,
time to riot and each sub issue the events Z one through the end when you set up
these same patterns.
But we use this model for is simply to display the infrastructure of an
interview and it has like any model,
very little advantage other than doing that.
But it is a way of looking at the dialectical potential that is at the heart of
any interview.
0: [inaudible].
4: Now there are some conclusions that I'd like to focus on here for just a few
minutes. As an outgrowth of
the modern that we present here
is only offered as one way of approaching the question how meaning is
constructed in an oral history interview as a model,
it's purpose is to give focus and direction for research.
It is not the final answer. It does not stand for the interview itself.
To that end,
we have offered hermeneutics as an interpretive social science and follow Joseph
[inaudible] suggestions concerning the interpretation of historical phenomenon.
Specifically [inaudible] argues that research with centers on such as the nature
of the oral history interviews should first establish a philosophical
theoretical base which elucidates how the process of interpretation occur,
which is why the model we hope accomplish it and I hope in the handout the model
has more illustrate the potential for you. Second,
you then use that philosophical theoretical theoretical base to direct
observation and description of the specific interpreting processes under
investigation.
That is this simply a in observing and describing what's taking place in the
interview stage, which we currently find ourselves in,
but at a very limited and early stage. Third,
you then identify those variables that shed light on the question of why the
facts are as they appear to be. In other words,
you can doctor close examination of the communicating interactions which
influence meaning construction and forth.
One can then make predictions based on those facts as to what may be expected in
the future.
The call in this paper is for oral historians to endorse efforts which seek to
examine the world history interview as a distinct phenomenon presenting unique
problems and opportunities of interpretation.
Oral historians have proved all two ready to adopt conclusions drawn from the
study of other types of interviewing from journalism to therapeutic interviews
and to use those conclusions and evaluation of students and in writing the
quality of a transcript. Why not move to the thing itself?
Why not arrive at conclusions that grow out of oral history as a unique form of
conversations?
We must remember that ours is a biological process of historical recreation and
that other models of interviewing violate that process. If for no other reason,
then does their muddy differ. For example,
in moving toward a reflexive sociology,
John O'Neill argues that we cannot accept the paradigmatic value of the
psychoanalytic conversation,
at least the far as the passive objectivity of the analyst is faults to the
dialogic search in which no member of the language community is absolutely
privileged and is therefore necessarily historical rather than clinical.
Ours is and historical method of conversation,
not clinical, not journalism either.
It cannot be denied that some of the problems presented by the requirements of
field research will do violence to the theoretical stance and its assumptions.
For example,
any systematic research into the oral history interview must use the magnetic
medium for data collection,
but such data will be used in conjunction with direct observation and can be
improved upon with the use of visual as well as audio tapes.
By using all these sources.
We may yet discover ways to read a transcript so that the conversation itself is
kept in view as it means from talk to Tate to talk.
Now, the kinds of research and business in this paper is yet to be funded.
The use of hermeneutics and teaching a two semester seminar in oral history has
raised some important questions,
not the least of which was foreshadowed in the opening section of this paper to
which should be over research be conducted with the tape recorder.
Now my answer here is so qualified as I could have used,
yes or no. I wrote the preliminary answer is no,
but not no. In a categorical sense,
I've adjusted as well have written the preliminary answer is yes,
but not yes in a categorical sentence,
but keeping in the spirit of negativism that marks the South. I will say no.
That's why you don't set up these days here.
The answer is based on the realization that oral history in its most usable and
most widely used form is reduced to print.
Thus the interpretive act that begins with the initial conversation must itself
be interpreted to satisfy the original meaning potential.
The interviewer must become more involved as an observer participant so that the
overall metaphor of the conversation nonverbal as well as verbal is made clear.
We have already seen how verbatim this is limited in its ability to recreate a
communicating event and in fact may lead to serious distortion and we have all
experienced the shock our respondents express on confronting a transcript.
The intuitive idea is that the transfer of conversation from one medium to
another requires an ongoing process of interpretation and only if that process
is completed or at least continued well those whose words we see seek be
satisfied that we have done them justice.
Only then will they confront a transcript and say that's it.
All areas to the above assertion of or are of course Legion.
I will raise to first the teaching of oral history should focus on note taking
and interpretation with the tape recorder and I have it used at all but use it
with the tape recorder employed as an aid to subsequent reconstruction.
After all,
we have boasted that conversation or oral history has been a part of the
historian stock and trade since time Memorial,
which certainly suggests that the trained and involved listener has always been
a part of that tradition. Second,
as some members of the association have heard the employment of oral history
should not be an end in itself.
It should always be the adjunct of serious and specific scholarship.
Only then can the interviewer assume the responsibilities I've talked about or
being a careful listener and subsequent interpreter.
Certainly my objections to the verbatim transcript cannot be taken as category.
The tape recorder used judicial judiciously can still have a valid archival
function.
Though its product should be critically evaluated and enthusiasm for its use,
more qualified above all students and users should be provided approaches for
evaluating oral evidence that relate to the circumstances of its production.
Finally,
I would submit that by studying the oral history interview as an interpretive
act, which does not end in a magnetic fix,
we may produce more humane scholarship.
We have long patted ourselves on the back for having a method which gets at the
less visible in society and yet we persistently refuse to engage the people with
whom we talk fearful of subjectivity. We retreat to an objective Tate,
which may in the final analysis work a greater distortion of the memory of the
people we interviewed.
I am not suggesting that we all become a G only that we seek to develop a little
a G N S all.
Only then can we combine what we learned through conversation with what we know
from other sources to produce a humane act of historical recreation,
the inability of narcissist to recognize himself and that reflecting pool maybe
compared with our own numb refusal to see our history in the conversational acts
of others. As you Nora, as wealthy,
Eudora wealthy's character and miss Adele Cortland declared,
I always pray people will recognize themselves in the speech of others and I
don't think very often they do.
But we can share ms Courtlands insight without giving way to her fear or we have
the ability if we have the will,
the read our history out of the speaking of others and to do so with profits as
the optimist daughter averred the mystery in how little we know of other people
is no greater than the mystery of how much
0: [inaudible].
2: My first comments commentator is, uh,
Dale Newman who you will notice is not male,
but rather to male looking at the sheets.
Uh, Dale first came to your attention of the oral history association when she
delivered a green paper last year on a race racing cross relations among the
Southern textile, uh, women. Uh,
it is part of her dissertation. She was,
she was doing at the University of Pittsburgh, uh, with David knockdown Marine.
Uh, she was recommended for that session by the way, by Larry Goodwin. Uh,
I think those credentials in terms of this audience so important,
but more importantly for the particular paper. Prior to coming to history, uh,
Dale's taught speech communications, uh,
debate as well as oral history and she has the coauthor of a volume entitled the
evidence.
After
1: reading and rereading,
listening and reflecting on colleagues intriguing and provocative proposal,
I have concluded that he is why and I have reached the level of a B3 on the
constant riot scales in our understanding of what oral history or Z ought to be
about.
Instead about doing the definition of oral history as the process whereby an
historian six,
to create historical evidence through conversation for the person whose life
experience if deemed memorable in order to derive the meaning is acceptable to
me.
Though I suspect that we may disagree on the definition of conversation and the
role of conversationalist.
I also have no objections to the model of hermeneutics as a philosophical,
theoretical base.
We're approaching the analysis and teaching of the oral history interviews.
Unfortunately we don't yet know what theories for how they're going to be
applied.
Now since the speaker and I are in agreement on fundamental issues,
let me take up where he left off. First,
I would like to take his corollary that oral history should always be the
adjunct of serious and specific scholarship.
A step further and assert that the best oral histories will be those collected
by an historian conducting his or her own interviews.
From a theoretical point of view, the oral,
his story and researcher is in a superior position to that of an interviewer
collecting data for archival storage for several reasons.
Ron,
the historian will have a greater knowledge of a subject under discussion to the
historian will have greater motivation to check and recheck and continue
researching and all available resources and three,
the historian will have a stronger incentive.
We're probing the sensitive areas of conversation during the interviews.
It is then with the assumption that the oral history interviews will be
conducted by the historian seeking answers to particular historical problem from
individual whose life histories are representative of a culture that would
propose additional corollary.
I would like to raise and make explicit a principle which is implicit and most
of the presentation we've just heard and that is the importance of repeated
interviewing as the practicing oral historian for the last eight years.
I am fully convinced that no interviewer can move to a maximum level of
understanding and one conversation no matter the length.
Repeated interviewing is important for many reasons,
but foremost among them is the opportunity for a painting more accurate
information and greater understanding of that information than a single
interview allowed.
Subsequent interviews may be more fruitful for determining meanings for the
following reasons.
Run spatial and temporal distance from the respondent enables the researcher to
define and refine conflicting perspective of himself and the respondent.
If we accept the thesis of hermeneutics, that justice,
every question contains a preliminary assertion,
so every assertion may be seen as the answer to a question.
Then distance between interviewer and respondent allows the interviewer to step
into the question horizon within which the respondent moved initially.
The second reason why repeated interviewing as essential is that the distance
between interviews allows the researcher to reflect on what was not said.
As Richard Palmer has noted,
it takes a great listener to hear what is actually said,
but a greater one could hear what was not sick,
but comes to light in the speaking theater.
Reich's advice for the training of analysts because not only a perceptive
rationale for the historian doing his own interviewing,
but also an eloquent argument for immersing oneself in the social processes.
More than one conversation,
the task of the analyst is to observe and to record in his memory thousands of
little signs and to remain aware of their delicate affects upon him.
If the student is often trained to observe sharply and accurately what is
presented to his conscious perception,
the conscious perception is much too restricted and narrow material is so much
richer, subtler finer,
and what can be caught in the net of conscious observation.
The small fish that escaped through the mesh is often most precious.
The third reason for conducting additional interviews with the same response is
that it gives the respondent time for reflecting and interview,
directs the respondent's attention for some aspect of his life,
which he probably has never considered before and detachment.
Following the interview,
he's likely to reflect on his conduct and to formulate descriptions and
rationalizations for it.
In addition to those that he gave during the first interview.
The second corollary,
which I would raise is that the oral historian interviewer should wherever
possible act as a participant observer of the cultural group,
which is the subject of research sociologist stubborn Rowan pointed out that
every culture has symbols which are personally meaningful in that culture.
Any social group, however,
will have a culture different somewhat from other groups.
These differences may find expression in a language.
Nuances are peculiar to and only understood by the group and interviewing
members of groups other than our own.
Then we are in a position analogous to that of the anthropologist who must learn
a primitive language with the important difference that we often do not
understand,
that we do not understand and that's likely to make errors and interpreting what
is said to us.
A single straightforward intervene offers little chance of rectifying mistakes
where they're unrecognized. In contrast for discipline,
observation provides a situation in which the meaning of words can be learned
with more precision.
We study other use in context an exploration through continuous interviewing.
More importantly as LL Bernard his remarks,
the student of culture must live and the door and observe most culture cannot be
stereotyped in question and answer form.
It is best to ask less and observe more if the historian collected own oral data
by conducting repeated interviews in a context that allows participation within
the cultural group under investigation interpretation of conversation should
they enhance evaluating the quality of the information secured,
live and informed interviewer's ability to observe,
interview and participate with the respondents and a wide variety of contexts
and over a period of time. One final comment.
The problem raised by the respondent's objection to the verbatim notes of an
interview will not necessarily be solved by the proposal set forth today if
there are simpler solution for the interviewer.
Is that followed by Donald Twain in 1962 in his study of the relations with
science to the federal government,
namely do not volunteer to send notes or transcripts to the respondent,
but they do not say will not upset them and the collection of life history from
representatives of cultural groups. It is the information gathered,
which is a primary importance and the characteristics of the respondents from
whom it is collected. It is not their names or their identities,
which we should protect
the divisive potential inherent in the public attribution of data to identify
will persons, what's suggested by tomorrow, her Raven yesterday,
the historian interviewer,
should they sensitive to the individual trauma which may result from revealing
sources of particular data.
Respondents are in an inferior position or protecting themselves since they do
not know what other respondents may reveal,
nor do they know what analysis the historian will bring to bear and they do not
know the audiences which they may ultimately reach.
2: All right.
Next commentator is one of the forefathers of the rural history movement.
I don't know who the other three might be. Uh,
he is currently director of the University of California at Los Angeles oral
history pro, uh, program. Uh,
he was program chairman for the San Diego meeting,
which many of you may have attended.
Andy is currently a member of the oral history association,
executive counsel Bernard gum.
5: I'm beginning to wonder how I got mixed up with this crowd here at the table.
I feel a little out of place. Uh,
when Kelly asked me to participate on this panel, it was, uh,
I told him I don't know anything about hermeneutics. He said, well, that's okay.
And I think what he wanted was someone who has handled,
uh,
the oral history interview and in particular the oral history transcript and to
sort of see how this flies by me.
In comparison to what we've been doing over the years,
uh, at UCLA. And I think as many programs, uh,
since you've mentioned my forefather status, uh,
the oral history transcript has gone through quite a few changes.
I think the verbatim transcript is we now see it is really something of a rather
recent, uh, vintage.
The early on worked in oral history was often more toward the very thing that
you're asking for towards perhaps something that would be closer to a book
because this indeed would satisfy the, uh,
that impulse that the, uh,
that the interviewee needs to have a well constructed sequential account of what
he has got, uh, has given to the interviewer. And then under that,
uh, guides, we did go through such things as, uh,
cutting and pasting and rewriting at the editorial level.
I think it was as a result of Arrowhead. And, uh,
the conversations among oral historians at that point,
who I think at that point were more archivists,
archivists than historian, uh,
because these were the people that were out in the field collecting, uh,
they were collecting the stories, uh, that would otherwise be lost.
And so it was from this point on that I think the need for one,
the preservation of the tape and then for the verbatim transcript as a result of
that tape started to evolve.
And now it seems that you're asking us to go,
I'm not sure that you're asking us to go one step ahead or perhaps one step in a
different direction and I don't know where you're asking us to go with our new
product that would come out of this, uh,
involvement between the interviewee or interviewer and the interviewee.
Uh, in last night's talk it scene,
I got the sense that the speaker was saying that this what had occurred in the
past with the, in the interview situation, we now could call oral history,
although we didn't call it at the time. And uh,
that's the note taking.
The combination of note taking and sending to people out in the interview
situation was something that's what's taking place at that time.
And could possibly, we perhaps should go back to that.
The only difference would be that now instead of taking,
having another person taking the notes,
we now have the tape recorder and that would relieve that.
But when we get back that we would now recreate the event as such.
Now I'm not sure, I think that's the direction in which you're trying to,
or suggesting that we'd go, uh, in your,
in your comments on such as us. The one thing that I,
that bothered me was that the reviewer in that did give,
uh, did give credit to the fact that the
quality of life history, that's probably not so much a, uh,
is probably as much a function of note taking ability and memory and literary
ski at scale of the field worker as it is of the interviewee's ability to recall
the past and describe it vividly. So in that sense, we are,
we're raising the question, does the, uh,
does the interviewer or the oral historian have this ability to bring about a,
uh, a transcript, uh, that would take into this, into account?
Uh, one of the experiences you had mentioned the shock that the interviewee has,
uh, on receiving the transcript.
I'm not so sure that that is a universal is as you would, uh,
propose. Uh,
certainly we have to take into account the vanity of,
of some of our interviewees. Uh, the other thing is,
is that I've also had the experience in other people examining that transcript,
that verbatim transcript in and remarking at how much indeed it does reflect,
uh, that person, how much it is a portrait of that person, a likeness,
if you will.
I think perhaps the shock of the oral history experience goes, uh,
back to, to the event itself. Uh,
at UCLA we have on tape a as part of the transcript and an experience that took
place with one of our interviewers.
He was conducting an interview as a rather, uh,
uh, tedious, uh,
interview in the sense that it had to be, uh, it had to be accomplished with,
within a very short brief of time. Uh,
and so it took place over several days. Well,
while the interviewer was, uh, gone from the scene overnight,
the interviewee decided to put something on the tape.
And, uh, and we really didn't discover this until much later.
Uh,
actually during the transcript process and I would just like to read you what
he, what he said. Uh,
the interviewee is an artist. He was a part of our, uh,
Los Angeles art community series.
Very sensitive individual. He said,
so it's eight o'clock at night and I've just been sleeping.
I feel very tired and bored with all this oral history.
I never realized how an intrusion into privacy is a, uh,
is a tiring or heart or a hard situation in that in a way your pressure to,
I should also mention it incidentally that Ren,
the interviewer is not here and I'm just speaking into the tape recorder because
I just thought it would be funny to do so
I didn't realize on the one hand that you feel that you have to say everything
correctly or remember correctly or be accurate.
It's not casual and it's not fun and it doesn't slow easily.
It's an effort. It's an effort. That's not a pleasant effort.
My impulse is to say, fuck it.
I'm going to do it and I'm not going to do it anymore and leave it at that.
On the other hand,
I think it's probably a very important thing to do and it's an important project
generally to have oral history because I, for one,
which sure as hell like to be able to listen to someone 200 or 300 years ago
speak about how they felt things and thinking about what's been said so far.
It sounds like I was indifferent to people and things at that time and in a way
that's true,
but what isn't coming out in this interview is that there was a hell of a lot of
fun. We did a lot of crazy things. You know,
we'd go down in a fist fight for each other and not particularly care for each
other. I'm talking about the guys in the gallery or yeah,
we'd compete for girls or you know, get roaring drunk together. And it was just,
it was, it was a now moment.
It was what we did that day and no one knew what tomorrow was.
It was where it was happening, it was happening around us. It was fun.
And there were lots of crazy things. Well,
I just feel that that on the tape itself and that in a verbatim transcript has
the value that I find that it would be very difficult for a historian to
reinterpret. And so I can see where the,
uh, that as you suggested that possibly we can become AGS.
That whether we, how many of us have the ability really to do that.
Um, uh, how many of us, uh,
have that particular genius in order to accomplish it.
That and not having that perhaps that we should be satisfied with a verbatim
transcript
0: [inaudible] bond before you opened up questions.
4: Yeah, I, I said know just a couple of things here.
Yeah.
For nothing else and to be very direct with what I'm proposing so that we won't
engage in the misunderstandings that I create made focus on the proposal itself.
Uh,
first is the testimony you read their very conclusion is almost an example of
what Dale was talking about in repeated interviewing. It was a coming back to,
it was a reflection on saying that original product wasn't it,
but there was more to it that we hadn't captured.
And I think that kind of repeated interviewing is uh,
an interesting idea that uh, uh,
squares well with what I would uh,
think is important in terms of recapturing the meaning of an event.
There. There are a couple of ways we can look at this thing.
They all said that the information gathered is of primary importance.
Now if we take that view then verbatim,
this is no concern,
3: it's not a problem because any objects that we produce through tape is going to
be information gathered to be used and interpreted by subsequent investigators.
I am trying to suggest here is that the information is created in conversation
and if we're going to separate it apart from any other fixed document,
then we've got to get back into the conversation itself and see how conversation
does sort of unique things and creating historical evidence.
Thus the proposal here is to start conducting close examinations of oral history
as a unique form of conversation so that when we use it to produce whatever
product we will,
we will be much more sensitive to the dynamics of historical recreation,
particularly the dialectical potential in that conversation.
And I know in my own experience when I first started teaching this stuff,
use binocular or somebody else who's reflecting on interviewing in general or we
would go to the journalistic interviews or we'd look at some psychotherapy Putin
models and all that and I just got the feeling that what we do is a fairly
unique animal and that we ought to start investigating its properties and not
properties about our conversations in general. Any questions? Oh,
well I would just, uh,
I would agree very much with the fact that that investigation is an order.
I don't question that at all. Uh,
I think what something that came to me is I read the, uh,
read your paper was to the fact that you are using conversation,
that your model involves, uh,
that you set it up as a conversation and I'm not sure that that is really
accurately what is occurring. Uh,
it's certainly a face to face encounter,
but I don't think that X and Y are equal partners in the,
I uh,
what came to me immediately was a well up around first tip to an uh,
to the interviewers that an interview is not a dialogue.
That the whole point of the interview is to set the, uh,
is to get the narrator to tell his story. And uh,
it seems that the model that you're setting up [inaudible] to,
to uh, to uh,
overcome the conflict or the uh,
life perspectives of the two people involved. I think in an oral history,
interviewer's successful one, the life perspective of the interviewer is,
uh, far less dominant in that, uh, in that,
uh, situation than is that of the, uh, of the interviewee.
2: Before we go on to comment on that,
because you could spend the whole day on the dialogue or not and what the role
of the interviewer plays or I'd like to open it up to the floor.
That's just two things. One,
I just wondered why you threw in the idea of dropping the tape recorder.
I can see what you're getting at. Is to get away from the verbatim transcript,
has the answer as the final product,
but didn't driving the tape record it seems.
And even in your terms of interpreting the interview and is that ongoing
conversation, you lose one of the two.
So interpretation if you dropped the tape recording person, secondly,
and your model with your contradiction and your continuity,
they going out from conflict.
If you go into contradiction and you recognize the doctor eviction,
you go back and you may move into continuity.
Given the assumption that continuity somehow the true picture of reality,
then the contradiction might be, and I don't see how that is,
it seems they have that sort of resolution could lead you to secrets when she
did interviews. Okay. Let me answer in a couple of ways.
I think you make good points on both counts. Uh, uh,
true.
The paper has a certain level of hyperbole in it about the type of core for the
sake of making the point. Uh,
I think type quarter quarter's an excellent age to reconstruction. Uh,
personally,
I would recommend that we try to train interviewers by giving them the
experience of interviewing from notes, uh,
interviewing with tape recorder alone or using that as the primary mode of
recreation and then a balanced approach so that they become,
got accustomed to getting very involved in the listening part of the interview.
Second thing, uh, that I'd say is that
I didn't mean to be prescriptive about moving out of contradiction back into
Contra riot. Uh,
that should only describe the things that are taking place.
And what I should have indicated is that you can move back to conflict and then
through control riot. And you're absolutely right. Contradiction is as much,
uh, as much to do with deposits in meaning as does Contra rioting
kind of variety will give a synthetic quality. The contradiction doesn't
what's your point's well taken? Are there other questions?
This is an odd real point you're dealing with
or on the model of the, into showed initially. Uh,
I'm interested in the word choice, uh, angle for that.
So just a moment. Uh,
does the follow that if X and Y are further removed from C the event they have
the benefit of word choices and Midwest the interpretations over a period of
time or does it follow that as they're closer to Z, they are
1: closer to the event and don't have to fight their way through the maze of word
choice over a period of time? Probably.
It's an excellent question. And I would say both.
There was a quotation in the hero that I exercised in the speaking because I
realized the paper was probably too long for and indeed watch too long for my
presentation from record,
which suggest that any event, uh, constantly re-enacts itself.
And to answer your question, yes,
I think that any event unfold through time and if we were to chart it out,
it probably goes like this. Uh, and uh,
the closer one is to the event, probably the
defining characteristics about a gun are more limited. The possibilities, uh,
explaining an interpreting to do that, uh, likely will increase three times.
They're not necessarily okay. All right.
If I may address the questions, nailed them on paper,
I was addressing nothing today
I realize the point of view story and perhaps those that are in the parents
in my experience be historians,
other one shot and the viewers and the oral historians.
Other people could go back again and again. Do you want to comment on that?
I would agree and I use the word historian.
I am thinking of the historian who is finding the oral collection of data
essential to the purpose. In other words,
I use the two words interchangeably in this particular presentation. Alright.
I see most of the people who are out in the woods would take the colors doing
books these days are history and they seldom go back to the same person.
Well, I think this is a critical error. I mean I think it's very unfortunate.
Yeah, I would be opposed to that. Similarly,
I'm opposed to the archivist to collect only one interview and no one goes back
because I don't think I've ever heard
an interview tape or read one based on one experience for which I did not have
questions and wish that someone would have gone back because there were camps or
places that were not clear and some program grants do that and some don't.
There are other questions like a couple of times, yes sir.
Uh, not here.
[inaudible] [inaudible] benefit. I would like
[inaudible] I
got the transcript back.
[inaudible]
I got the idea that a strong reason to do a
error corrected,
I think you're quite right that it would be considerably to the benefit of the
interviewer to clarify that everything had been recreated,
uh, accurately or as close there to as possible.
And it's simply a matter of it not being possible for some of these field
situations. And my analysis, uh,
today was based primarily upon my own field experience,
which is involved about 22 trips to North Carolina and interviewing over 200 and
some people,
many of whom were illiterate and another large percent of whom were for all
practical purposes, functionally illiterate.
So when I've had a single interview is running six hours or repeated interviews
that run, you know, far longer,
it simply has not been practical to transcribe or send back all of that.
Now ideally, yes,
I would go over everything with the individuals involved. Um,
and where you have the option of corroborating what you have gathered with
response. I think that would be desirable. But again,
I think that it is not necessary in terms of that first rationale of having the
respondent in front his amputated self from whatever.
4: Tell me what changes do you think would occur in your model or in the situation?
In a situation in which the interviewer would return to the interview?
We will repeated interviews reconstructing just saying that, that
it would extend the temporal line, uh,
and extend those little dotted lines running down and saying each time it is
subsequently reflected upon. That would be honest to uh, um,
the idea of re reflection that is present hermeneutics.
That's generally what did we do to the
3: model.
2: Tina
[inaudible] and many of the persons that I used to, um,
were dead by the time
I can see them
three times during the research
and um, [inaudible] and
going back over and over.
But they're also, they are
[inaudible].
I would certainly agree with that.
If you're suggesting that your research project
or am I misunderstanding
the practitioners or would it require that all the interviews?
3: Well, it would be nice. Uh,
probably would arrive at,
I suspect in my mind's eye right now is just a way of describing what is taking
place in an oral history interview,
which then gives each or reader all of that, uh, of those findings.
Some ability, uh,
some better ability to interpret the dynamics of the conversation,
which may make them one better interviewers. And finally,
two better interpreters of the products that they are using.
I do not see, uh,
this kind of research has healing yielding of a prescriptive formulas though
each person confronting this findings made by a certain prescriptions out of,
but it is by and large to be honest to the method that we have put forward a
very descriptive exercise.
2: Oh, uh,
with the wide brain, almost the internet
moves on the people doing the interviewing, I don't really care.
I have not used tape recorders. One comes from find bang,
an higher score
ostensibly from those notes, those interviewers mostly
shorthand, then road
West and now people are going back and
forth once the different interpretations of the data.
An examination of the dynamics of the interview or the dialectical processes of
the interview between say the higher gun like people or the historian
or the archivist
would shed light on what is in the transcript or the end result,
whatever you want to be working. All of the efforts. I mean,
what would you add to the transcript?
You talked about the emotional States of the nervous States
or the degree of tension between,
I suspect it would have little value for the higher guns, uh,
to use your phrase there. Um,
it seems to me that the cry,
your emphasis there is almost to say that any information is good information or
any information is usable information. I'll,
I won't put the value judgment on it. And that is true. Uh, we,
we are constantly by simply going out in one shot interviewing or repeated
interviewing or anything else, creating information that can be used.
Uh, I guess my,
my point is that we want to do it through conversation.
Why not tried to reach back into the conversation to find out the dynamics of it
and how it creates the information itself.
Brings that information into V so that, uh,
know in its use and in the way we go about collecting it,
we may do a little better job of it
called for the analysis dynamics
very often
there, or at least a grain of truth, or at least it's a lot of
[inaudible] analysis. Please. Uh,
when people began listening to the tapes,
uh,
I think that's very helpful and it certainly moves in the direction
that I address here. Yep. Yep. I've met, he,
I think that there is a continuum of distortion that occurs,
forgot the conversation,
which we usually initiate and we hope that it creates some historical
information of value. Uh,
and then I think that's a continuum distortion runs, uh,
through a videotaping to
tie subsequent interpretations and own down the line. And, uh,
my point was that most frequently we seek to reduce this to tight best.
We move from an oral ephemeral bleeding medium into a fixed medium by way of
another fixed medium. The magnetic tape,
which lies on this line at the store shelf.
And what I'm saying is if we go to the print medium,
we ought to be honest enough to try to get back to a point like this,
which is a reinterpretation of the dynamics of that conversation,
what it was about. And uh,
if I might intervene in this moment, a car doesn't bother him. Eddie talking to
me is the definition of the thing in itself because it strikes me,
we're talking about a number of things is first of all the event itself.
There is often the conversation itself and there are a series of documents of
the conversation. Now if we are to concentrate upon
any particular thing in itself,
what we are then concerned with are the rules of its creation and let us not
talk now about the historical event itself because that's a whole seminar and
historiography, the creation of historical events,
but we are talking about the creation of the conversation and there are rules
for creating conversations.
Conversations I patented it was they weren't pattern. We would go mad,
we couldn't talk to one another. There are rules.
We are comfortable talking to one another.
Since there are rules of conversation that means that every interview that I've
conducted is the same as every other interview conducted.
No matter if it's the hot shots. Did you say are hired guns?
No matter is it's the two of what you do in a bar.
There are forms of conversation. If we can discern the forms,
we can then begin to discern the rules and we talk about the rules of
construction. The question is, is there a historical conversation?
Is there a special kind of conversation that is historical when two people begin
to talk to one another in the now about the thing,
is that a special kind of thing? If it is then what are the rules now,
but that is not the same thing as the rules of the creation of the record of the
conversation,
which is again a different thing so that you know what confuses me is a
marriage,
what I feel to be a need for a sharp distinction when we talk about the thing
itself and then what are the constituent elements in the rules of creation.
I guess what I'm saying is is it's a little alien.
Maybe that
Clark's paper gives us a way,
a very good way to be self conscious that I get your viewing.
I had this story where a certain kind of operative in the kind of history we get
when we do that. What I want to know.
What do I get in terms of using the creative interviewed as historians once we
have them as a historical document. I mean,
I think we get better historical documents with the self consciousness of,
um, process that we got from the paper.
Did we get anything that makes us better and better stories at a different stage
in the process, which is using interviews, whether we let her,
I created them or whether somebody else created them.
And I've turned my attention to that and those interviews with research.
So am I, in what ways do you help me be better, better?
And starting with those interviews, if I can, again,
intervening talk to data issue about who.