Reflections on being an oral history insider: subjectivity, intersubjectivity and speech therapy

Stansfield, Jois ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3476-7002 (2020) Reflections on being an oral history insider: subjectivity, intersubjectivity and speech therapy. Oral History Journal, 48 (2). pp. 90-101.

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Abstract

Speech therapy in the UK is a relatively small profession with a unified professional body being established in 1945. The first members of this body had careers influenced by major social environmental and social policy changes in the second half of the twentieth century, but their voices have largely been unheard. This article is based on an oral history study carried out with speech therapists who qualified after the Second World War. It explores the opportunities and challenges involved in being a speech therapy insider collecting these oral histories. It argues that, despite, or possibly because of, my constant self-questioning throughout the process, my insider status was more of a benefit than a disadvantage in constructing the resulting oral history.