Pratiques d’enquêtes (review)

This is a bilingual collection of twenty-five articles (four of them in English), all field-based and covering a vast array of countries and languages, yet united in their focus – that of methodology built on personal experience. The book, surveying the collecting of oral data (folktales, proverbs, songs and oral poetry) from its humble beginnings in rural France to its global dissemination on the Internet, presents a rich and growing field, and reveals the seminal work of educators. From France, Spain, Sardinia and Greece to Australia, and from Côte d’Ivoire to the Democratic Republic of Congo, through Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and Central African Republic, it brings together the pieces of an unlikely puzzle, spanning more than a century and covering both real and virtual worlds. It uncovers the hidden wealth of people (Australian Aborigines, Andalusian Gypsies, Palestinian women) whose orality is usually ignored by the media, and illustrates challenges encountered by those tracking oral genres in the midst of conflicts.

While a number of the studies focus on a geographically localized field, some treat thematic subjects such as body language and performance (Calame-Griaule and Pasqualino), traditional medicinal knowledge (Motte-Florac), and the dimensions of memory in oral transmission and performance (Furniss). Calame-Griaule’s article, enriched with drawings and photographs, is a reminder of the pioneering role she played in the development of performance studies. The authors show the need to take the context of those performances into account and demonstrate oral performance, political events and social occasions as closely linked.

Several articles report on the various classifications proposed so far for the publication of oral genres, proverbs in particular (Leguy), and discuss their merits and demerits. Three of the articles signal the growing importance of digitalization and online databases in the development and storing of oral data (Roulon-Doko, Glowczewski and Dauphin-Teinturier). These bring to the fore the crucial role of the Internet in the successful creation and development of a neo-orality ‘captured in an increasingly more sophisticated and malleable set of media’ (Furniss p. 142), each with its own implications.

A number of these take the form of practical, autobiographical reports, offering a personal reflection on life-changing experiences in the field, experimenting with various techniques and covering years of patient exploration of oral genres. They are also movingly human, highlighting the centrality of the relationship between researchers, mentors, informants and interviewees, giving readers a glimpse of the linguistic and technical difficulties encountered and of the wealth gathered, and revealing fieldwork as the birthplace of a new and multiple identity. The three book reviews that follow the articles and present recent seminal publications on orality – those of the CNRS-LLACAN team (Baumgardt and Derive), Finnegan and Massignon – add to this sum. Bringing together historical and recent data, featuring both traditional and new oral genres, reporting on past and ongoing fieldwork from various continents, all rarely seen together, Pratiques d’enquêtes is a valuable addition to the recently published books on oral research methodology.