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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

oral history, audio recording, family history, editing

College

Humanities

Department

Linguistics and English Language

Abstract

Oral history is popular among many academic circles as a medium of communicating a more personal, intimate view of the past than is commonly found in the dry commentary of a standard history text. The emotion included in a eye-witness account becomes its own commentary as feelings and facts are intertwined in the telling of a personal story, history from an ordinary person’s point of view. It is important to understand history not only as a series of events, but as actual experiences that shape people’s lives. Speaker and interviewer (or reader) form a unique emotional bond in the telling of firsthand experiences—it is as though they relive the experience together through the telling of it. Seemingly everyday events become extraordinary occurrences when witnessed through the eyes of another. Accounts of wartime experiences and even everyday life offer valuable insight as to how things used to be. The emotion contained in these eyewitness accounts spans time, making history real and exciting.

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