about interviewing - what not to do

What not to do (See also What to do)

1. DO NOT interrupt. NEVER, EVER, EVER interrupt or talk over a person. If you MUST clarify something someone said, wait until a natural stopping point. Don’t interrupt.

2. Do not talk over people or raise your voice. If you have a deep voice, or a loud voice, be careful not to allow these traits to inhibit, silence, intimidate, shut down, or talk over others.

3. Do not ask questions that call for a “yes” or “no” answer, or another short answer.

4. Do not ask a question that assumes too much.

Example:

What was the trial like for you?

So how did you decide to become a police officer?

(Not everyone goes to trials. Not everyone makes a decision to go into a particular line of work. Often, things just happen: opportunities arise. Conditions and circumstances “set limits and exert pressures,” in Raymond Williams’ phrase.)

A better option:

Could we talk about the period when the trial was going on. . . could you tell me what that time was like for you?

Would you tell me how you got into police work?

5. Do not ask questions or make comments that suggests that a person should have or would have felt a certain way.

6. Do not make yourself the center of attraction in any way, for instance with your dress, demeanor, or emotional responses.

7. Do not show off how much you know about the person, the events, the topic, or what you think the person might be going through, thinking, or feeling.

8. Do not become so obviously sad, shocked, or distraught about what you are hearing that your responses take up as much or more emotional and physical space, time, and energy than the narrator's.

9. Do not respond with your own experiences, stories, opinions, beliefs.

10. Do not turn the interview into a conversation.

11. Do not push the narrator to talk about anything that she or he doesn't want to talk about or say more about.

12. Do not assume you know what the "important" part of the story is or direct the narrator in a particular direction.

13. Do not encourage or allow a narrator to tell you privileged information, secrets from the confessional, or any kind of secrets about potential or pending criminal cases or lawsuits. Politely but firmly hold up your hand and stop the person and turn off the camera and all other recording mechanisms. Remind the person that the interview and your communications are confidential but not privileged, and that if they share otherwise privileged information with you and the camera, they lose the privilege. Explain what that means and the potential repercussions, however remote you think those repercussions are. (This hypothetical scenario should discourage you from talking, outside the office, about who you are planning to interview or have interviewed!)

14. "Correct" or argue with the narrator.

- Someone says something happened in 2001 & you know it must have happened in 1991. LET IT GO!
- Someone conflates schizophrenia with bi-polar disorder. LET IT GO!
- Someone interprets the law in a way you think is totally wrong. LET IT GO!
- Someone uses a racist or misogynist word or homophotic or anti-Semitic or otherwise nasty, ignorant term. Any other time you might intervene, but in the interview. . . LET IT GO!
- Someone makes a patently false & stupid claim that really angers you....LET IT GO!
- Someone says, I'm on a great new diet that has me only eating meat and drinking caffeine....
- Someone ways, I'm working out and decided to use double the barbell weight I was using last week.....LET IT GO!

In an oral history interview, you can't be a lawyer, a teacher, a clergy person, a therapist, a physician, a moralist, an activist, an editor, a trainer, a publicist or a politician. Don't mess with or challenge the narrator.

Neither are these interviews journalistic or the kinds of interviews you'd find on talk shows. You're not Stephen Colbert or Geraldo Rivera or Bill Moyers or Oprah, either.

This interview is not about showing what you know, taking care of someone else, showing them how to live, or you changing what people think. Neither is oral history is not about establishing "facts."

Oral history is good at finding out how other people experience the world. We've asked to be admitted into the narrator's world. She or he has generously allowed us inside. Now that you're there, appreciate the narrator's generosity. Recognize what a privilege and treasure you are offered....just listen.