Tonkin Presentation
Group Members:
Jill Becker
Laura Shanks
Jennifer Seaton
Audra Foggin
Introduction
 The past can be viewed in many different ways
 “why do people seem to remember different aspects of the past?”
 The introduction deals with interconnections between memory, cognition and history and
shows how they shape our selfhood. ‘Past’ structures memory also!
 Representations are what the past is all about in the ‘web’ of life and are what constitute
aspects of our selves.
 Genres
 Representation in the form of oracy and narration of the past is about social action in the way
that the interactions and person as a speaker makes sense to another
 Orality is the basis of the human mode of communication.
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Chapter One
 Characteristics of Sasstown Important to Oral History
 Physical and social characteristics -small, coastal community
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Thinly populated
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Former trading post
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Only accessible by vehicle since 1975
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Patriarchal society
 History of fighting for territory and against government rule
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Sense of identity
High regard for speaking skills
openness of society
 Sieh Jeto
 Major Jlao historian
 Respected speaker on tribal matters
 Organization of narratives
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Plot
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Sequence
Chapter Two
 There is nothing direct and simple about observation
 Heroic personae
 Narrative in a known genre—method for warriors to boast
 Genre as social practices
 Changes in the genre can be connected to wider social processes
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Disappearance of the warrior genre
 Significances of the self
 Eyewitness
 Construction of a self
 “We” could be a variety of people
 Narrators and audiences affect the content and direction of the narrative
 Authority and use of language
 The narrator should be listen to
 Legitimacy of the narrator is established
 Eyewitnesses and truth
 Cannot prove or disprove their experience
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 What are the eyewitnesses doing?
A Definition of Genre
Genre: a set of culturally specific conventions concerning expectations for how characters'
actions are understood, for understanding the relationship between the events in the story and
the events in the everyday lives of the participants who tell and hear stories, or for designating the
appropriate occasion for telling a story.
§This definition comes from the article "Narrative" by Amy Shuman, pg838.
Chapter Three
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Differences Between Oral and Written Genre's
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Oral
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occasion of performance important
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features of delivery crucial
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cues of occasion important
 Written
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setting in which one reads text is often irrelevant to its interpretation
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cues of form and style important
 Autobiography as Genre
 develops self-presentation by providing models to follow or modify.
 Heroic Genres
 social conditions important EG. social conditions of wartime resistance can produce heroic
tales
 heroic tradition is ideological
 glorifies some at the expense of others
 Narratives: form of a message in contrast to the term "story" which is used to refer the content
 report sequence of events
 construct realities
Chapter Four
 History is constricted to a cultures concept of time
 The oral history event is finished, but the narrative is boundless
 The telling of the event is a event in itself
 Changes their perception of the past present and future
 Can set a narrative in special time to make the story apart of their life
 Time is continuous but thought of as discontinuous
 A chunk of time must be picked and a perception
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Chucks of time picked don’t necessarily correspond to when they actually occurred
 They have other ways of keeping track of time
 If a narrator does not mention anything about a patch of time, it is believed to be static
 It is not possible to transcribe oral history
 Cannot capture pauses, stress and intonation adequately
 Cannot capture the sounds of words because English is not truly phonetic
 We have no concept of chanting in our culture
 Their culture does not specify tense, but linguists do.
Chapter Five
VS
Subjective Testimony
Traces
“full of prejudices, false inhibitions and myopias”
Moral charm (purely
(Maurice Blocth p. 84)
impersonal) no social purpose
Limitations of eyewitnesses
Distinguishes these from “Eyewitness
(Eg. Oprah and book Eg.)
Accounts”
The “Talking Book” Fallacy
Chapter Six
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Oral Narratives
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Social action
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Repetition and patterning
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Appropriate time occasion and purpose
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Particular audience directed
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Tonkin disagrees with individual’s and societies being dichotomized
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Peoples decisions not their own but social and cultural
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Memory and imagination cannot be totally distinguished
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Memory coded in language
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Memory triggered by material evidences
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Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Connerton and Habit memory
Memorization of historical oral narrative
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Stream of narrative
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Individual experience/recollections contribute to group identity
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Connerton and Personal memory
Pierre Boudrea and habitus
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Socialization through everyday practices
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Genres in language, we pick what will be best understood
Chapter Seven
 Oral history is not intrinsically more or less likely to be accurate
 Historical documents are often orally recorded
 People act on history as recorded which may be false
 People protect their own reputation and thus consciously or unconsciously may alter their
portrayal of history
 Sometimes oral history is seen as primitive history
 Historians however careful we still have to use memory to form history
 Levi-Strauss
 History “appears to be a regurgitation of facts”
 Fixed references of time passage and relationships make history appear more factual
 Tonkin talks of tacit knowledge and how oral history may appear incomplete because of it
 The Jiao Kru people’s use history as a form of narrative and discussion
 People live in a different time and thus may misinterpret historical meanings
 Tonkin emphasizes the example of Mormons
 Mythic ideal of past, present and future
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