Sociophonetics and oral history

This paper addresses the relationships between sociophonetics and oral history from the point of view of the artifacts they both produce: oral archives. Differences and similarities with respect to fieldwork and data collection, the relationship between researchers and speakers, and the transcription of oral documents are discussed. FAIR principles and issues concerning data use and reuse are presented, in order to introduce open-science principles. Finally, the potential of a closer cooperation among oral historians, sociolinguistics and sociophoneticians, speech technologists, and digital humanists is envisaged. A case study ('Vulnerable voices in an asylum') is also presented, in order to show how legacy can give voices to under-represented samples of people, usually outside the lens of a sociolinguistic investigation.