Experts Answer to Oral History Questions

100 Questions/ 33

What effect do the narrator’s personal characteristics have on the narrative?

Translated By Mandana Karimi

2026-6-10

We asked several researchers and activists in the field of oral history to express their views on oral history questions. The names of each participant are listed at the beginning of their answers, and the text of all answers will be published on this portal by the end of the week. The goal of this project is to open new doors to an issue and promote scientific discussions in the field of oral history.

In this project, a question is asked every Saturday, and we ask experts to present their views in the form of a short text (about 100 words) by the end of the week. All answers will be published together so that the audience can compare and analyze the views.

The content is the opinions of the senders and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Oral History website. Although the answers are supposed to be based on about 100 words, in order to be polite and not to leave the discussion incomplete, in some cases, answers longer than that are also accepted.

The experts are asked to submit their answers by Sunday night so that all answers can be published on Tuesday.

From the interweaving of these responses, using AI, we have arrived at theories about oral history that will be published in the near future.

Question 33

What effect do the narrator’s personal characteristics have on the narrative?

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Answers to question 33:

Hassan Beheshtipour

Since the narrator is considered the backbone of the narrative in oral history, their individual characteristics are the most decisive semantic layer of the final work. These characteristics, which play a central role in how memory is formed and transmitted, can be briefly summarized as: background and social status, personal beliefs and values, memory and storytelling ability, emotional connection to the event, the time elapsed since the incident, and the purpose and motivation for telling the narrative. These six factors, along with other individual traits, directly determine what is included or excluded in the oral history narrative, how, and for what purpose.

Additionally, individual memory may be influenced by collective memory, cognitive biases, and reinterpretation of the past. Therefore, oral history narrative is not a complete reflection of reality but a combination of historical fact, personal perception, and the conditions of storytelling.

Gholamreza Azizi

Every person has intellectual, behavioral, emotional, and ethical characteristics, all of which can directly or indirectly affect the narrative in some way. Ethical characteristics operate in two opposing spectrums of "good/positive" and "bad/negative" in "recalling and expressing memories." Positive ethical traits (including truthfulness, fairness, justice, empathy, honesty, adherence to values, etc.) often have the best effectiveness in expressing the narrative, the closer to the event, and negative ethical traits (such as lying, boasting, deceit, selfishness, narcissism, bias, arrogance, jealousy, pessimism, revengefulness, etc.) work in the opposite way.

Of course, some individual traits such as forgetfulness, truthfulness, and lying have a complete and significant impact on the narrative.

Mohammad Mehdi Abdollahzadeh

The reality of any event is singular; however, its narration by different individuals will not be the same. This is because narration is influenced by the narrator's personality. The diversity of narrators' personalities, which is affected by age, gender, knowledge, beliefs, opinions, prejudices, social class, family, climate, nutrition, experiences, and in short, environment and heredity, causes some to focus on one part of the event and others on different aspects. Personality causes the narrator's tone to be intimate, honest, serious, casual, colloquial, or contrary to these types of tones. The influence of personality on narration leads us to say that every narration consists of the story and the storyteller, and the narrator is part of the text's world. Consider a hospital where the female staff wear white uniforms. At first glance, they all appear to be female doctors, but when each speaks a few sentences, we can distinguish the doctor, the cleaning staff, and the nurse because people convey various characteristics through their speech, including their age, literacy, and even their gender traits, and so on.

Gholamreza Azari Khakestar

The personal characteristics of interviewees directly and indirectly affect the narrative. They can even produce somewhat inaccurate data and provide it to researchers. Knowing the personal characteristics of the narrator enables interviewers to strive to manage the interviews. Traits such as exaggeration, concealment, bluffing, lying, and so on can each alter the course of the narrative. If oral history researchers know the personality of the narrator, they can reach a desirable conclusion about the truthfulness of the speech or the degree of narrative deviation with doubt and based on various sources. Therefore, the personal characteristics of the narrator affect the narrative and cause part of the statements to be examined with doubt.

Abolfat’h Mo’men

Oral history is the result of the narrator's account of events accumulated in their mind. This narrative is transformed into speech during the interview and then into text. The focus of this process is the narrator themselves, with firsthand information and personal characteristics. Through their narrative, one can understand the motivations, feelings, and hidden aspects of events. The narrator's individual traits have a direct impact: a strong memory and daily notes make the narrative accurate and coherent; their accent and native culture help preserve that language and beliefs; their level of knowledge and literacy connects the narrative with contemporary discussions. However, pitfalls such as expediency, self-interest, self-exoneration, ideology, and forgetfulness also affect it. A fair narrator with a scientific spirit can reduce these harms, but an introverted narrator makes access to the truth difficult. Sometimes the narrator deliberately withholds memories and effectively becomes the creator of the "war of narratives," challenging the oral history researcher.

Seyyed Mohammad Sadegh Feyz

Age, gender, social, cultural, political background, as well as individual and even family preferences of the narrator can alone or collectively affect their narration. Moreover, the type of expression and choice of words in the narration convey their bias.

The narrator's memory can have a direct relationship with the narration; because the passage of time reduces the recounting of emotions and increases political biases, etc. Also, in the military, we hear more about successes than failures.

The narrator is the center of the narration of stories.

Ja’far Golshan Roghani

Memory power, mental order and coherence, ability to speak and use words and phrases, sufficient physical health, family and social status and upbringing, level of control over anger and joy, level of education, material and immaterial attachments can be considered factors that, as individual characteristics on the part of the narrator, can affect the content of the interview and narrative. In some cases, these individual characteristics are linked to the narrator's knowledge, awareness, and presence at important historical times and places, resulting in specific outcomes in the expression of the narrator's mental memories. I remember that the content of the interview with the late Hashem Amani, one of the bazaar fighters and a member of the Islamic Coalition Society, was severely confused, disturbed, and disorganized due to the narrator's lack of mental coherence and poor physical health.

Hamid Ghazvini

Narrative is influenced more than anything by the inner character of individuals; although external variables also affect the narrative. For example, honest, humble, fair, and responsible individuals have a literature and perspective free from falsification, exaggeration, and convergence, or extroverted individuals present memories and details with more confidence. While introverted individuals behave oppositely. Also, those who are interactive and optimistic about their surroundings have narratives that differ from those who have a biased view of various issues. Thus, it can be said that individuals' characteristics greatly influence the manner of expressing the narrative.

Shafigheh Niknafs

If the interviewee has a direct connection to the interview topic, has a healthy memory, can clearly express their experience, memory, and feelings, and also has the ability to easily establish a relationship, then it is possible to conduct a successful interview. However, as explained in previous questions, factors such as general culture, collective memory, the interview environment, the interviewer and the intersubjective relationship between them and the interviewee, the presence of anxiety, and so on all affect how the interviewee recalls memories, and false recall or concealment cannot be solely attributed to the personality traits and ethics of individuals.

Abolfazl Hasanabadi

In oral history, you deal with information that originates from an individual's lived experience. The personal and social status of the narrator is directly influenced by characteristics such as honesty, memory, bias, or ignorance, which affect the choice of words, style of expression, tone of the story, and the type of content recall. In fact, it is the individual traits of the narrator that shape the narrative and, through the framing of the presented content, intentionally or unintentionally influence the audience's understanding and judgment, engaging them with their fears, hopes, feelings, happiness, sadness, successes, or failures.

AI

The narrator's personal characteristics, such as age, gender, beliefs, level of knowledge, psychological state, and experiences, directly affect the point of view, tone, and credibility of the narration. An incredulous or naive narrator recounts events in a limited or distorted manner. A biased narrator presents information one-sidedly. A child or mentally ill narrator blurs the line between imagination and reality. Additionally, the narrator's knowledge of the story world (for example, an omniscient narrator versus a first-person narrator) determines the extent to which the reader gains insight into the characters' inner themes and hidden events. Overall, the narrator is a filter through which the truth of the story is told.