Reticence in Oral History Interviews

Oral history interviews contain reticences—conversational shifts by the narrator which limit dialogue on particular matters. Reticences indicate points of tension for the narrator and warning signs for the interviewer that dialogue is, to an extent, disrupted. Reticence is an assertion of a narrator’s authority in that dialogue. Examining reticence enlarges understanding of the sharing of authority which occurs in interviews and the shared authority, to use Michael Frisch’s term, embodied in the completed interview. In a group of interviews with former power station workers on their work and workplace, reticences fell into four categories—that which did not fit narrators’ purpose in agreeing to the interview, that which did not fit within narrators’ bounds of social discourse, that which was painful or disturbing to discuss, and that which did not fit with public, commemorative memory. Analysis of these different reticences illuminates, above all, the negotiation of authority within the interview dialogue.