Remembering takes place in a later present
Remembering occurs afterwards, in a particular present. In an interview recorded in December 2022 and published in 2023, Alessandro Portelli explains that recollection is affected by the time in which people speak. Both the historical event and its later narration deserve investigation. An interview records an encounter between narrator and interviewer, rather than direct access to an unchanged past.[1]
His Italian example concerns Marisa Musu’s recollection of speaking about the Resistance: young audiences once asked about military action, while later audiences asked more about feelings. Changed questions brought different aspects of the same experience forward. The example does not establish that one version was false. It shows why a researcher should preserve the questions and the interview’s date alongside the answers, including when studying family memories of Punjab.[1]
Making a transcript
Columbia University’s 2018 transcription guide describes the transcript as a document produced through several people’s work. A recording preserves aural and visual information that text cannot fully carry. Transcription, editing and narrator review shape how speech becomes readable. A polished paragraph therefore should not be mistaken for the event itself, or even for a complete reproduction of everything communicated during the recorded conversation.[2]
The guide gives this principle a concrete institutional history: Columbia once removed interviewers’ questions so that transcripts would read more like books. Its later practice retained questions and comments because the exchange matters. For a reader, an answer to a leading question and an unprompted recollection are different pieces of evidence. Removing the prompt can conceal that difference even if the narrator’s surviving words are copied accurately.[2]
Investigating a claim
Portelli notes that interviewing a grandparent still involves differences of age and education. Applied to Punjabi family history, this suggests recording who asked, when and in what relationship. A hesitation or changed emphasis may explain the telling without independently proving the date or circumstances of the remembered event.[1]
Columbia calls for transparent editorial insertions and treats even an inaccurate statement as potentially meaningful evidence. The practical distinction is between checking a factual claim and erasing the way it was remembered. Keep the original record and identify corrections or annotations, so readers can examine both the account’s historical assertions and the later process through which people made sense of their experience.[2]
Sources & notes
Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.
- Ewa Maj, interviewing Alessandro Portelli / Wrocławski Rocznik Historii Mówionej 13. “Every interview is like a still photograph of a moving object”: interview with Professor Alessandro Portelli ↗primary scholarly oral-history interview · Source date: 2023 · Locator: Printed pp.261,264 and266–267: recording date, interview differences, Marisa Musu and changing present of memory. Accessed 2026-11-01.Actual English interview PDF inspected. Recording 9 December 2022, publication volume2023. Italian examples are explicitly comparative.Return to Remembering takes place in a later present, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Remembering takes place in a later present, paragraph 2 ↑Return to Investigating a claim, paragraph 1 ↑
- Liz H. Strong; edited by Mary Marshall Clark and Caitlin Bertin-Mahieux / Columbia University Center for Oral History Research. Oral History Transcription Style Guide ↗primary university oral-history practice guide · Source date: 2018 · Locator: Printed pp.1–4 / PDF pp.4–7: transcript role, guiding principles, questions, fact-checking and audit-edit. Accessed 2026-11-01.Actual43-page institutional PDF fetched; specified introductory/process passages read. Publication announcement dated 17 January 2018 was also inspected. Its narrator-review practice is described as Columbia’s, not claimed as review performed for this website.Return to Making a transcript, paragraph 1 ↑Return to Making a transcript, paragraph 2 ↑Return to Investigating a claim, paragraph 2 ↑
Record PH-JOU-0022 · English edition · human review not performed