Over the past thirty years, oral history has found increasing favor among social scientists and humanists, with scholars “rediscovering” the oral interview as a valuable method for obtaining information about the daily realities and historical consciousness of people, their histories, and their culture. One primary issue is the question of how the communicative performances of the interviewer and narrator jointly influence the interview. Using methods of conversation/discourse analysis, the author describes the collaborative processes that enable interviewers and narrators to interact successfully in the interview context.
ForewordGreleRonald J.PrefaceAcknowledgmentsTranscription Notation SystemThe Oral History Interview as an Interpretive Communicative EventAchieving Cooperation and Coherence in the Single Role of Information ElicitorAchieving Cooperation and Coherence in the Dual Roles of Information Elicitor and AssessorStorytelling in Oral History as Collaborative ProductionCommunication-Related Issues for Oral HistoriansNotesGlossaryBibliographyIndex
Eva M. McMahan is a professor emeritus of communication studies at James Madison University. She is the coeditor of Interactive Oral History Interviewing.Ronald J. Grele is the former director of the Columbia University Oral History Research Office. He is the author of Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History and editor of Subjectivity and Multiculturalism in Oral History.