Editing Oral tradition (section)

===Historiography===
{{expand section|date=May 2024}}
Oral traditions have been utilised in many historical fields, however are most associated with pre-colonial African history.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Law |first=Robin |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315505176-10/oral-tradition-history-robin-law |title=Writing and Africa |date=1997 |chapter=Oral tradition as history|pages=159–173 |doi=10.4324/9781315505176-10 |isbn=978-1-315-50517-6 }}</ref> Historians generally view oral traditions as neither entirely symbolic or wholly true, but a synthesis of the two, requiring great skill and subtlety to separate them.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Isichei |first=Elizabeth |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3C2tzBSAp3MC&dq=african+history&pg=PP14 |title=A History of African Societies to 1870 |date=1997-04-13 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-45599-2 |language=en}}</ref>{{Rp|page=11}}

[[Jan Vansina]], who specialised in the [[history of Central Africa]], pioneered the study of oral tradition in his book ''Oral tradition as history'' (1985). Vansina differentiates between ''oral'' and ''literate'' civilisations, depending on whether emphasis is placed on the sanctity of the written or oral word in a society. The Akan proverbs translated as "Ancient things in the ear" and "Ancient things are today" refer to present-day delivery and the past content, and as such oral traditions are both simultaneously expressions of the past and the present. Vansina says that to ignore the duality either way would be reductionistic.<ref name="Vansina 1971 442–468">{{cite journal |last=Vansina |first=Jan |title=Once upon a Time: Oral Traditions as History in Africa |journal=Daedalus |volume=100 |issue=2 |year=1971 |pages=442–468 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024011 |publisher=MIT Press|jstor=20024011 }}</ref> Vansina states: 
{{blockquote|Members of literate societies find it difficult to shed the prejudice and contempt for the spoken word, the counterpart of pride in writing and respect for the written word. Any historian who deals with oral tradition will have to unlearn this prejudice in order to rediscover the full wonder of words: the shades of meaning they convey to those who ponder them and learn them with care so that they may transmit the wisdom they contain as the culture's most precious legacy to the next generation.<ref name="Vansina 1971 442–468">{{cite journal |last=Vansina |first=Jan |title=Once upon a Time: Oral Traditions as History in Africa |journal=Daedalus |volume=100 |issue=2 |year=1971 |pages=442–468 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024011 |publisher=MIT Press|jstor=20024011 }}</ref>{{rp|page=442}}}}

==== Recording a tradition ====
{{Expand section|date=November 2024}}
{{blockquote|Ask him now to repeat the story slowly so that you may write it. You will, with patience, get the gist of it, but the unnaturalness of the circumstance disconcerts him, your repeated request for the repetition of a phrase, the absence of the encouragement of his friends, and, above all, the hampering slowness of your pen, all combine to kill the spirit of storytelling.  Hence we have to be content with far less than the tales as they are told. |author=[[Edwin W. Smith|E.W. Smith]] and [[Andrew Murray Dale|A.M. Dale]] |title=''The Ila-speaking peoples of Northern Rhodesia'' (1920) |source=<ref>{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1= E.W. |last2=Dale |first2=A.M. |title=The Ila-speaking peoples of Northern Rhodesia |year=1920 |url=https://archive.org/details/ilaspeakingpeopl01smit}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |journal=Oral Tradition |url=https://journal.oraltradition.org/wp-content/uploads/files/articles/9i/1d_Introduction_9_1.pdf |volume=9 |issue=1 |year=1994 |first=Lee |last=Haring |title=Introduction: The Search for Grounds in African Oral Tradition}}</ref>}}