Impact of Emotional Status

Purposeful conversations about past events and their excavation from the narrators mind is effective in mitigating psychological stress accumulated over time to create more favorable emotional status. Even in some cases it is felt that the narrator is trying to settle accounts with a specific person by recounting some issues to set free from a mental and conscientious pressure and achieve some sort of peace.

General features of memoir writing

Undoubtedly, memoir writing is one of the oldest forms of writing, dating back to the history of the invention of script and writing. Perhaps one of the questions posed by the promoters of memorabilia is “what are the memoir feature qualities?” Does the memory writer has to have any special techniques? Whether writing personal memories is easy or absent?

Impact of time on oral history

Dominant political and cultural trends are a serious threat to memoir recording and oral history since they surpass the perspective and judgment of the narrator concerning individuals and various issues. The impact is sometimes so bold that comparison of the narrations during such times to the previous versions reveal serious differences. This has been prevalent in the memoirs of the Islamic Revolution and the Holy Defense or people.

Which priority?

Receipt of memories or truth discovery

Targeted interview within the framework of a specific subject is one of the prominent features of oral history. Accordingly, the oral history scholars are requested to maintain respect towards the narrator, open their mind and patiently listen to the narrator and ask questions in due time within the limits defined.

Memoir Verification

One important question concerning publication of oral history literature is the extent to which the narrator is to be trusted? Is it the obligation of the oral history scholar to verify the memories? Is the scholar allowed to argue with the narrator? Does such literature fit the criteria of an historical resource?

About Oral History Production

To Maintain Questions or Not? Is crucial

Production and final setting of the interview content is an important aspect and the oral history scholars have to be well versed on the details and act responsibly. The following have to be taken into consideration:

When to produce interview text? – 2 (Finale)

Continuum of Oral History

In response to this question it was indicated that production starts not at the end but parallel to the interview, since finding the suitable narrator, selecting the subject and outlining questions are planned by the interviewer and conducted with a specific approach and precise objectives which are pursued during the interview.

Partiality for oral history

One of the basic issues for historians is to focus on mechanisms that make less Partiality for historiography as much as possible. Partiality (fanaticism) for historical research is one of pitfalls that disturb the truth-based axioms and bring countless outcomes. As a consequence, this phenomenon is problematic in all aspects of chronicles.

When to produce interview text? – 1

A challenging question for oral history scholars is when to produce or transcribe the interview recorded content? Is it to be done after the interview process is over or start parallel to the interview course? Undoubtedly, most responses will indicate that once the interview is complete and the audio text is transcribed and narrators consent is obtained over the transcription then editing and production of the written literature begins. In this approach, there are two distinct procedures: interview and production.

Photo & Oral History

In the past, historians were more likely to use the text and written documents, which changed considerably with the advent of oral history. For example, through oral history, information and new aspects of historical events were discovered for researchers that they had previously neglected. In the course of this process, in recent decades, pictures have been considered by some historians as one historical data. The important point is that an image can provide multiple data to the researcher.