Oral history is a formal presentation of past events by word of mouth. The presentation of this information is done by individuals who are culturally sanctioned bearers of a community’s tradition or culture such as the oldest members of the society. Oral history can also take the form of an informal conversation about the past between family members, coworkers or neighbors. With the introduction of technology, oral history has moved a step further to include printed stories that mainly talk about the past of human beings, their culture and relations. Recorded interviews and printed compilations can only be treated as oral history if the individuals who presented the recorded or printed information were deemed to have very important historical information to tell in their story.
Oral history is an integral source of information to historians. The word of mouth is still an important aspect of history, especially in studying human culture and how certain communities lived in their past. Oral information is one of the oldest forms of storing historical information. Information in the past, where there were no printed, recorded or any other forms of technology, was transferred from one generation to another by word of mouth. Therefore, oral history can be summarized as a self-conscious and disciplined conservation of past information. This could be between two people, a community, or family as long as they consider this information to be historically significant. As observed before, oral history has many advantages to historians. However, there are also disadvantages and disadvantages of oral historical information. There are many gains that historians can gain from using oral history to gather and store historical information. However, they also risk losing other important information by using this historical information source.
One of the major advantages of oral history is that it can be used by historians to fill the informational gaps in written and printed history. In the past, historians have written about how people’s cultures and lives are on a day to day basis. However, the writers of these materials did not capture all aspects of the community’s culture. For instance, a historian writing about the culture of the Phokeng community in South Africa only focused on the general social, economic and political lifestyle of this community. However, using oral history, historians can follow up and fill in the informational gaps by interviewing a section of the old members of this society so as to obtain further information on this community. From the interviews, one can establish how the Phokeng community regarded the female members of their community, how they initiated their youth and how they related with their neighboring communities. These informational gaps can be filled by use of oral history.
Oral history is important because it is like a firsthand source of information, which is usually more reliable than secondary sources such as books and archives. Historians approach people who have experienced historical events in person or have sufficient information are usually reliable sources of historical information. These people are interviewed and recorded in order to store this information. For instant, interviewing a soldier who took part in the Second World War is regarded as more reliable information than reading a journal on the Second World War. This is because this soldier was on the battle front and experienced the events first hand compared to an author.
Another advantage of oral history is that it can be used to obtain information from places where other forms of historical sources cannot be used. For instance, tape recording an old person from native South Africa, who does not understand English or know how to write. Historians can simply obtain the information they are interested in by using an interpreter to interview the old person. They can obtain historical information by assessing the oral history such as songs, stories, legends and myths of certain communities.
Oral history is cheaper than other historical information source and gathering methods. Oral history only involves interviewing people who have potentially important historical information and recording them. This is much cheaper compared to other forms of gathering information such as written history. For instance, printed history will require an interview, editing, printing and publishing, which are much more costly and time consuming.
Despite the advantages, oral history has several disadvantages too. Oral history is difficult to collect in some areas because issues such as language barriers. This is common especially when studying native communities whose culture and language are totally different from that of the historian. The historian may be forced to look for an interpreter or have to spend time and learn the native language. This makes oral history cumbersome and difficult to gather.
Furthermore, there is the risk of getting twisted information hence; reporting inaccurate information. An interviewee may be suspicious of the historian’s intentions and decide to give inaccurate information about their culture. The interviewee could also be having personal agenda to extort the historian in exchange of information. In case he does not get what he wants, he gives wrong information. In other cases, the respondents are pretenders who do not have any important historical information and they only want to extort or manipulate historical information.
Historical information is mostly obtained from the eldest members in society. This is because they are the most knowledgeable and experienced. However, the old people could be affected by selective memory, where they cannot remember information and events clearly. This could lead to tempering with the historical information hence; making oral history unreliable.
The historian could have a prejudiced opinion about some historical information. They can decide to manipulate this information by simply cutting out some parts of the interview and recording those that they know will favor the outcome that they desire. This makes historical information less reliable than other sources of information.
Studying oral history enables one to gain first hand and reliable historical information that can help fill the historical information gaps in most historical data. Historians also stand to gain because oral history is cheap and easy to conduct. Oral history information can also be important in gaining new insights about a certain group of people from studying their stories, songs, legends and myths. However, historians risk losing important information when they use oral history because there are high chances of misunderstandings and misinterpretations between the historian and respondent. In scenarios where interpreters are used, important meanings can be lost when interpreters give inaccurate accounts from those of the interviewee. Furthermore, oral history is risky because this information keeps changing from time to time. Despite its merits and demerits, oral history is an integral part of history and should be used often to collect and store historical information.
Works Cited
Bozzoli, Belinda and Mmantho Nkotsoe. Women of Phokeng: consciousness, life strategy, and migrancy in South Africa. Cape Town: Heinemann, 1991.
Prins, Gwyn. Oral History. New York: Oral History Society, 2008.
