现代口述史对传统历史学的突破与拓展

Modern Oral History's Breakthrough and Development from Traditional History Study

现代口述史产生于人类社会从近代向现代的转折期,它一方面继承了传统史学欲以史为诫的治史功能,同时,又反映了现代人欲以通俗的方式反省、总结在通往现代化过程中已走过道路的愿望。由于口述史走的是"自上而下"与"自下而上"并举的路线,它的研究波及到社会各阶层的生活状况。口述史的取材弥补了传统史学的文献不足,拓宽了历史学对社会的干预和教育功能。口述史的方法论吸取了新社会史学向社会现实调查取证的科学方法,又迎合了信息化时代各种知识日益综合化,知识之间相互交叉、相互融合的大趋势,因而在未来会有更为广阔的发展前途。

Modern oral history came into being at the transferring point of the human civilization from the near history to the modern era.On one hand,modern oral history inheritated the essencial funtion of instructing people with past experiences from the traditional history study.On the other hand,it also reflected the wishes of modern people to review and inspect the path they have gone on the way to modern time in the more concret ways.As modern oral history makes researches on human society and individual lives by the double-way of from the top to the bottom and from the bottom to the top,its researches cover all the corners of the human society and various people.Its collections of historical references make up the shortage of written records,thus,assigning the target of instructing the social life to historical study.The methodologies of oral history absorb the essences of sientific investigation and interviewing practised by modern social study,meanwhile fitting the the general tendencies of knowledge combination with any one knowledge crossing the border of the others in the information age.So we can predict that modern oral history will has a splendid prospective.