ABSTRACT
As the term itself implies, oral history is a specific form of discourse: history evokes a narrative of the past, and oral indicates a medium of expression. Cappanera's narrative acquired status and importance, in his own eyes as well as his daughter's, because of the interview itself. In fact, even when stories have been told before, they have never been told to that special listener and questioner who is the oral history interviewer. In theory, oral history can be about anything; open-endedness at all levels is one of its distinctive formal characteristics. There is no oral history before the encounter of two different subjects, one with a story to tell and the other with a history to reconstruct. By opening the conversation, the interviewer defines the roles and establishes the basis of narrative authority. The most immediate difference between a field interview and any other conversation is that in the interview the voices go through some kind of machine.
