The sounds of media: an interdisciplinary review of research on sound as communication

Bruhn-Jensen, Klaus The sounds of media: an interdisciplinary review of research on sound as communication. Revista Comunicar, 2010, vol. XVII, n. 34, pp. 15-23. [Journal article (Paginated)]

[thumbnail of 03i.pdf]
Preview
PDF
03i.pdf

Download (93kB) | Preview

English abstract

Sound remains significantly underresearched as a form of communication, as a modality of experience, and as a resource for cultural expression and social interaction. This is in spite of the centrality of sound in most media and communicative practices, including face-to-face interaction and digital networks. Recent years, however, have witnessed a revitalized interest internationally in the area. This review revisits previous research on three sound prototypes – speech, music, and environmental soundscapes – which has mostly been undertaken in separate disciplines: rhetoric, philology, linguistics, classical musicology, popular music studies, architecture, discourse analysis, and more. The article, further, outlines the potential for more interdisciplinary research on sound as communication – as a source of meaning and as a resource for action. This potential is suggested by the diffusion of mobile media and the pervasiveness of communication in everyday contexts. At present, ordinary media users are in position, not only to receive, but also to send diverse forms of auditory, visual, as well as textual information. Users are becoming senders in new configurations of one-to-one, one-to-many, and, increasingly, many-to-many communication. Ubiquitous soundscapes and other mediascapes are even challenging received notions of what a ‘medium’ is and could be. In conclusion, the article suggests that the growing current interest in sound studies itself may be the product of a reconfigured media environment in which sound has come back in style.

Spanish abstract

Es significativo que resulte todavía escasa la investigación sobre el sonido entendido como forma de comunicación, como modalidad de experiencia y como recurso para la expresión cultural y la interacción social. Y ello a pesar del papel central que el sonido tiene en la mayoría de las prácticas comunicativas y mediáticas, incluyendo la interacción cara a cara y las redes digitales. En los últimos años, sin embargo, hemos observado un renovado interés, por parte de la comunidad académica internacional, en este área. Esta revisión atiende a las investigaciones previas sobre tres tipos de sonido –la palabra hablada, la música y los paisajes sonoros ambientales– que hasta ahora han sido en su mayoría abordados por disciplinas diferentes y separadas entre sí: retórica, filología, lingüística, musicología clásica, estudios de la música popular, arquitectura, análisis del discurso y otras. Este artículo, además, enfatiza el potencial de un mayor número de investigaciones sobre el sonido como forma de comunicación, como fuente de significado y como recurso para la acción; lo que hoy resulta manifiesto por la difusión de los medios móviles y por la penetración de la comunicación en los contextos cotidianos. En la actualidad, los usuarios de los medios de comunicación tienen la capacidad, no sólo de recibir, sino también de enviar diferentes dinámicas auditivas y visuales, así como también información textual. El usuario se está convirtiendo en emisor de nuevas configuraciones de comunicación uno-a-uno, uno-a-muchos, y cada vez más, muchos-amuchos. La ubicuidad de los paisajes sonoros y de otros paisajes mediáticos desafía, pone en entredicho, las nociones tradicionales relativas a lo que es un «medio» y a lo que puede ser. En conclusión, este artículo sugiere que el renovado interés actual por los «sound studies» puede ser en sí mismo el resultado del entorno mediático reconfigurado, en el que el sonido se ha puesto de moda.

Item type: Journal article (Paginated)
Keywords: Sound, speech, music, soundscapes, rhetoric, philology, linguistics, musicology, sonido, comunicación oral, música, paisajes sonoros, retórica, filología, lingüística, musicología.
Subjects: B. Information use and sociology of information > BC. Information in society.
H. Information sources, supports, channels. > HH. Audio-visual, Multimedia.
Depositing user: Alex Ruiz
Date deposited: 10 Aug 2012
Last modified: 02 Oct 2014 12:23
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/17412

References

ALBRECHT, R. (2004). Mediating the Muse: A Communications Approach to Media, Music, and Cultural Change. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

ANDERSON, B. (1991). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

APPADURAI, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

BARNES, S.H. (1988). Muzak. The Hidden Messages in Music: A Social Psychology of Culture. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen

Press.

BODEN, M. (Ed.). (1996). Artificial Intelligence. San Diego, CA: Aca demic Press.

BORN, G. (1995). Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avantgarde. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

BOURDIEU, P. (1984). Distinction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

BULL, M. (2000). Sounding Out the City: Personal Stereos and the Management of Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg.

BULL, M. & BACK, L. (Eds.). (2003). The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.

CERQUIGLINI, B. (1999). In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

CHOMSKY, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

CLARKE, D.S. (1990). Sources of Semiotic. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

CLAYTON, M.; HERBERT, T. & MIDDLETON, R. (Eds.). (2003). The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge.

COOK, N. & EVERIST, M. (Eds.). (1999). Rethinking Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CORBIN, A. (1998). Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the 19th-Century French Countryside. New York: Columbia University

Press.

ERLMANN, V. (Ed.). (2004). Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening, and Modernity. Oxford: Berg.

FINNEGAN, R. (1989). The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

FRITH, S. (1996). Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

FRITH, S. & GOODWIN, A. (Eds.). (1990). On Record. London and New York: Routledge.

GAY, P.D.; HALL, S.; JANES, L.; MACKAY, H. & NEGUS, K. (1997). Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage.

GENA, P. & STROM, C. (2001). A Physiological Approach to DNA Music. 4th Computers in Art and Design Education Conference, Glasgow.

GREENFIELD, A. (2006). Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing. Indianapolis, in New Riders.

HALLIDAY, M.A.K.; TEUBERG, W.; YALLOP, C. & CERMAKOVA, A. (2004). Lexicology and Corpus Linguistics: An Introduction. London: Continuum.

HAVELOCK, E.A. (1963). Preface to Plato. Oxford: Blackwell.

HUMPHREYS, L. (2005). Cellphones in Public: Social Interactions in a Wireless Era. New Media & Society, 7(6); 810-833.

JAMES, J. (1995). The Music of the Spheres: Music, Science, and the Natural Order of the Universe. London: Abacus.

JENSEN, K.B. (2002). The Humanities in Media and Communication Research, in JENSEN, K. (Ed.). A Handbook of Media and Communication Research: Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies. London: Routledge.

JOHNSON, J.H. (1995). Listening in Paris: A Cultural History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

KEIL, C. (1966). Urban Blues. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

KENNEDY, G.A. (1980). Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Se cular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

KERMAN, J. (1985). Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

KRAMER, L. (2002). Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

LABOV, W. (1972). The Logic of Non-standard English. In GIGLIOLI, P. (Ed.). Language and Social Context. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. (Orig. publ. 1969).

LANZA, J. (1994). Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Mood-Song. New York: Picador.

LEPPERT, R. (1993). The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

LEVY, M. (1993). Symposium: Virtual Reality: A Communication Perspective. Journal of Communication, 43(4).

LING, R. (2004). The Mobile Connection: The Cell Phone’s Impact on Society. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

MCCLARY, S. (1991). Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press.

MCLUHAN, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill.

MEYROWITZ, J. (1985). No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.

MEYROWITZ, J. (1994). Medium Theory, in CROWLEY, D. & MITCHELL, D. (Eds.). Communication Theory Today. Cambridge: Polity

Press.

MIDDLETON, R. (1990). Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press.

MIDDLETON, R. (Ed.). (2002). Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

MILLARD, A. (1995). America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

NOTT, J.J. (2002). Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

PERELMAN, C. (1979). The New Rhetoric and the Humanities. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Reidel.

PETERS, J.D. (1999). Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

PETERSON, R.A. & KERN, R.M. (1996). Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore. American Sociological Review, 61(5); 900-907.

POSTMAN, N. (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death. New York: Viking.

POTTER, J. (1998). Vocal Authority: Singing Style and Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

ROGERS, E.M. (1999). Anatomy of Two Subdisciplines of Communication Study. Human Communication Research, 25(4); 618-631.

SAUSSURE, F.d. (1959). Course in General Linguistics. London: Peter Owen.

SCHAFER, R.M. (1977). The Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

SMITH, M.M. (2001). Listening to Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

STACEY, J. (1994). Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship. London: Routledge.

SUBOTNIK, R.R. (1991). Developing Variations: Style and Ideology in Western Music. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

TAGG, P. (1979). Kojak. 50 Seconds of Television Music: Towards the Analysis of Affect in Popular Music. Gothenburg, Sweden:

University of Gothenburg.

THOMPSON, E. (2002). The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

TREITLER, L. (Ed.). (1998). Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History. New York: Norton.

WATZLAWICK, P.; BEAVIN, J. H. & JACKSON, D. D. (1967). Pragmatics of Human Communication: A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes. New York: Norton.

WEBER, M. (1958). The Rational and Social Foundations of Music. New York: Southern Illinois University Press. (Orig. publ. 1921).

WETHERELL, M.; TAYLOR, S. & YATES, S. (Eds.). (2001). Discourse Theory and Practice: A Reader. London: Sage.


Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item