Un projet régional de recherche sur les ethnotextes

A regional research project on ethno-texts. Ph. Joutard. This article is a report of research project on ethno-texts from south-western France. It consists of a survey of the oral culture of a community and of written documents preserving traces of this raol culture. The group has given precedence to the study of a limited geographical area : it considered informants primarily as representative of their community ; it made no attempts to collect life histories ; it prefered semi-directed interviews to the constraints of the questionnaire. Confronting these data with the written documents makes it possible to measure the gap between the reality of the past and memories of it, and to note lapses of memory and silences. The primary aim is not to describe the old ways of life of community, but to bring out the discourse about itself and to understand how its memory works.Joutard Philippe. Un projet régional de recherche sur les ethnotextes. In: Annales. Economies, sociétés, civilisations. 35ᵉ année, N. 1, 1980. pp. 176-182