Communicative dynamics of hermeneutical conversation in oral history interviews

Oral history is a form of conversation. Its generic function is to transmit a culture by word of mouth. In this paper, the potential of oral history interviews for becoming dialectical, here termed hermeneutical conversation, is examined. In addition, the speech actions and the usage rules necessary for producing hermeneutical conversation are identified and explained. The process of making events disputable, which has been neglected by discourse analysts, is emphasized as a central feature of the communicative dynamics of hermeneutical conversation.