Marriage of convenience... In search of new analytical methods in oral history

Abstract

I believe that a combination of perspectives deriving from a variety of disciplines leads to a more convincing, truthful, and richer reconstruction of the image of the past. The mail goal of this paper is to present the ways in which the methodologies of various disciplines within the humanities have so far been combined in oral history, as well as to discuss a new proposal, inspired by the methodology of ethnolinguistics and fully compatible with the needs of the field I represent. In the first part of this paper I present the paradigmatic changes that have taken place in oral history, as well as the discipline’s current assumptions and research questions. After that, relating to my own research, I propose to apply the methodology of reconstructing the linguistic worldview in analyses of oral narratives.