Practice question · True or false
The interviewer's questions shape the testimony, which is why oral historians archive the recording rather than the transcript alone.
Hints
- Is the interview a retrieval or a co-production?
- Two people make it.
Show the answer
True
Why
True. Testimony is produced in an encounter, so the questions, the rapport and even the silences are part of the evidence, and a transcript strips the hesitations and tone that carry much of it. Archiving the recording lets a later researcher assess what the interviewer contributed.
Practise Oral History and Testimony
The app has 5 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Oral History and Testimony
- Sort each use of oral testimony: appropriate or inappropriate?
- Why does Portelli treat a factual error in oral testimony as evidence rather than as grounds for discarding…
- The same person gives noticeably different accounts to a university researcher and to a community…
- Which effects reshape a memory before it reaches an interviewer?
- Why is oral history often the only available source for some subjects?
- Complete the practice.