Cover not available

Article published In: Life Storytelling across Media and Contexts
Edited by Jarmila Mildorf and Zuzana Fonioková
[Narrative Inquiry 35:2] 2025
► pp. 315–336

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Story alteration in oral history retellings

Methods of comparative work

ORCiD logo with link | HES-SO Valais-Wallis University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland
 | Charles University
 | Charles University
 | Charles University
Published online: 23 January 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.24018.mly
Abstract
The digitalization of oral history (OH) has resulted in the availability of multiple interviews conducted with the same narrator under different circumstances. To explore the comparability of such materials, we analyze interviews with a Holocaust survivor from the Fortunoff Video Archive (1979) and the Visual History Archive (1997), focusing on instances in which she tells the “same” episode. We demonstrate that life-story segments before and after the episode provide clues for sense-making and reflexively constitute the narrative environment. The specific interactional features of OH as a situated practice contribute to the story’s recognizability and discursive alteration. Similarities and differences are detectable due to the coherence established by the social setting of OH, including its availability in a digital archive, which guarantees comparability and incorporates a broader chronology. The main contribution of our paper is methodological, as it outlines an apparatus for the comparative analysis of OH across multiple databases.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Seeing “similarities” and “differences”: Everyday comparative practices as a resource and a topic
  • 3.Narrative comparability and the “identity” of a life story
  • 4.Story alteration in content, discourse, and context: A case study
    • 4.1Similarities and differences in a recurrent episode
    • 4.2The episode’s location in the life story
    • 4.3The digital situatedness of OH narratives
    • 4.4An apparatus for comparative work with OH narratives
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
References (54)
References
Allison, F. H. (2004). Remembering a Vietnam War firefight: Changing perspectives over time. The Oral History Review 31(2), 69–83. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Broth, M. (2008). The ‘listening shot’ as a collaborative practice for categorizing studio participants in a live TV-production. Ethnographic Studies 101, 69–88.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Button, G., Lynch, M., & Sharrock, W. W. (2022). Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis and Constructive Analysis: On Formal Structures of Practical Action. London / New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chand, A. (2021). Same interviewee, different interviewer: Researching intersubjectivity in studies of the reserved occupations in the Second World War. The Oral History Review 48(1), 3–19. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cole, T. (2015). (Re)placing the past: Spatial strategies of retelling difficult stories. The Oral History Review 42(1), 30–49. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dailey, S. L., & Browning, L. (2014). Retelling Stories in Organizations: Understanding the Functions of Narrative Repetition. Academy of Management Review 39(1), 22–43. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Fina, A., & Toscano Gore, B. (2017). Online retellings and the viral transformation of a twitter breakup story. Narrative Inquiry 27(2), 235–260. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Exell, A. (1986). The experience of being interviewed. Oral History 14(2), 66–67.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frege, G. (1948). Sense and reference. The Philosophical Review 57(3), 209–230. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garfinkel, H., & Liberman, K. (2007). Introduction: The Lebenswelt origins of the sciences. Human Studies 30(1), 3–7. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Georgakopoulou, A. (2011). Narrative. In J. Zienkowski et al. (eds.), Discursive Pragmatics (pp. 190–207). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenspan, H. (2014). The unsaid, the incommunicable, the unbearable, and the irretrievable. The Oral History Review 41(2), 229–243. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2019). The humanities of contingency: Interviewing and teaching beyond “testimony” with Holocaust survivors. The Oral History Review 46(2), 360–379. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. (1971). “Poetically man dwells”. In A. Hofsdater (ed.), Poetry, Language and Thought (pp. 211–229). New York, NY: Harper & Row.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jeftic, A., Van de Putte, T., & Wyss, J. (2023). Introduction: Bringing memory studies and interactional narrative studies together. Narrative Inquiry 33(2), 259–268. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kocián, J., Mlynář, J., & Hoffmannová, P. (eds.) (2020). Malach Center for Visual History on Its 10th Anniversary. Matfyzpress.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kress, G. (1979). The social values of speech and writing. In R. Fowler, B. Hodge, G. Kress & T. Trew, Language and Social Control (pp. 46–62). London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lambrou, M. (2014). Narrative, text and time: Telling the same story twice in the oral narrative reporting of 7/7. Language and Literature, 23(1), 32–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(ed.) (2021). Narrative Retellings: Stylistic Approaches. London: Bloomsbury. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Y., & Mlynář, J. (2023). “For example” formulations and the interactional work of exemplification. Human Studies 46(3), 607–633. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linde, C. (1993). Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence. New York / Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1997). Narrative: Experience, memory, folklore. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7(1–4), 281–289. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linell, P. (2004). The Written Language Bias in Linguistics: Its Nature, Origins and Transformations. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Löwe, B. (2010). Comparing formal frameworks of narrative structure. Computational Models of Narrative: Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium (FS-10-04).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marsh, E. J. (2007). Retelling is not the same as recalling: Implications for memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science 16(1), 16–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miall, D. S. (2004). Episode structures in literary narratives. Journal of Literary Semantics 331, 111–129. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mildorf, J. (2023). Life Storying in Oral History: Fictional Contamination and Literary Complexity. De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mlynář, J. (2015a). Jacques Le Goff: Must We Divide History Into Periods? (Review) Historická sociologie / Historical Sociology 2015(2), 121–123. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015b). Malach Center for Visual History. In J. Hlaváčová (ed.), Sborník Semináře o digitálních zdrojích a službách ve společenských a humanitních vědách (WDH 2015) (pp. 83–89). Charles University.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2021). Rewatching a video clip in classroom work with digital oral history. Bulletin suisse de linguistique appliquée, vol. Special, no. 1, pp. 57–76.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2022). How is oral history possible? On linguistically universal and topically specific knowledge. The Oral History Review 49(1), 116–132. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mlynář, J., & Arminen, I. (2023). Respecifying social change: the obsolescence of practices and the transience of technology. Frontiers in Sociology 81. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mlynář, J., Kocián, J., & Hofmeisterová, K. (2022). How ‘tools’ produce ‘data’: Searching in a large digital corpus of audiovisual Holocaust testimonies. In M. Chesner et al. (eds.), Jewish Studies in the Digital Age (pp. 65–88). Berlin: De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mondada, L. (2006). Video recording as the reflexive preservation-configuration of phenomenal features for analysis. In H. Knoblauch, B. Schnettler, J. Raab & H.-G. Soeffner (eds.), Video Analysis: Methodology and Methods: Qualitative Audiovisual Data Analysis in Sociology. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Niemelä, M., & Rauniomaa, M. (2010). Mobilizing (re)tellings of a story to accomplish multiple social actions. SKY Journal of Linguistics 23(2010), 227–264.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Norrick, N. R. (1998). Retelling again. Narrative Inquiry 81, 373–378. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ochs, E. (1979). Transcription as theory. In E. Ochs & Bambi B. Schieffelin (eds.), Developmental Pragmatics (pp. 43–72). New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pagenstecher, C. (2018). Testimonies in digital environments: comparing and (de)contextualising interviews with Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch. Oral History 46(2), 109–118.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Polanyi, L. (1981). Telling the same story twice. Text 11, 315–336.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Psathas, G., & Anderson, T. (1990). The “practices” of transcription in conversation analysis. Semiotica 78(1–2), 75–99. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sacks, H. (1984). Notes on methodology. In J. Heritage & J. Maxwell Atkinson (eds.), Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis (pp. 2–27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1992). Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saint Arnault, D. & Sinko, L. (2021). Comparative ethnographic narrative analysis method: Comparing culture in narratives. Global Qualitative Nursing Research 2021(8). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sherzer, J. (1981). Tellings, retellings and tellings within tellings: The structuring and organization of narrative in Kuna Indian discourse. In R. Bauman & J. Sherzer (eds.), Case studies in the ethnography of speaking (pp. 249–273). Austin, TX: Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strauss, A. L. (1987). Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Watson, R. D. (2008). Comparative sociology, laic and analytic: some critical remarks on comparison in conversation analysis. Cahiers de praxématique 501, 197–238. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophische Untersuchungen / Philosophical Investigations (fourth edition). Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H. (1999). Horizontal and vertical comparative research in language and social interaction. Research on Language and Social Interaction 32(1–2), 195–203. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Zimmerman, D. H., & Pollner, M. (1970). The everyday world as a phenomenon. In J. D. Douglas (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life: Towards a Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge (pp. 80–103). Chicago: Aldine Publishing. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue