How people sound, not what they speak.
April 11, 2010 12:42 PM Subscribe
Is there any work done on "aural ethnography"?
I am getting interested in how the sounds we make in conversations differ from culture to culture: the pitch, speed, pauses, etc.
Is there any research work done here that is primarily aural? I have found speech ethnography research, but they are mostly based on linguistics (grammar) etc.
I am getting interested in how the sounds we make in conversations differ from culture to culture: the pitch, speed, pauses, etc.
Is there any research work done here that is primarily aural? I have found speech ethnography research, but they are mostly based on linguistics (grammar) etc.
Your looking for the Music episode of radiolab.
Also, paging fourcheesemac.
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:09 PM on April 11, 2010
Also, paging fourcheesemac.
posted by Lutoslawski at 1:09 PM on April 11, 2010
Ha, thanks Lutoslawski. I was drawn in by the question anyway.
There is a large and growing literature of "sound studies" (probably the best search term) across several disciplines -- anthropology,linguistics, music/ethnomusicology, cultural studies, history, technology and media studies -- from the last decade or so. Authors like Jonathan Sterne (The Audible Past) and Charles Hirschkind (The Ethics of Listening) have created what sometimes feels like a new field of study at the intersection of all these disciplines with aural culture.
If you are specifically interested in oral/ aural features of conversational discourse, you want to look at literature in the ethnography of speaking, and what has been called "musico-linguistic" ethnography.
The questions that interest you were proposed and first articulated by Edward Sapir and Roman Jakobson in the 30s-60s, theorized in crucial ways by Dell Hymes and Dennis Tedlock during the 60s and 70s, and developed during the 80s and 90s in work by Joel Sherzer, Greg Urban, Laura Graham, Richard Bauman, William Hanks, Bambi Schieffelin, Steven Feld and many others associated with a "discourse centered" approach to sociolinguistics (and as Lutoslawski suggests, I am one of those associates. If you write me by MeMail, I'll share some crucial references on which I am an author or co-author, as I'd rather not be explicit about my own identity here, because the fact is it's hard to cite the crucial recent references without citing me, if I may be un-humble for a moment. ) And of course that work is concerned with "grammar" -- but oral grammar, precisely the questions that interest you! You have to contend with the framework of grammatical theory to understand why the focus on oral (and non-discrete) features is a radical critique.
It's not entirely clear what you're looking for if by "pitch, speed, pauses," etc., you do not mean to refer to oral grammatical structures, primarily the domain of linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and descriptive field linguistics, as well as ethnomusicology and oral literature. There is a body of work in proxemics and kinesics (Ed Hall, for example) and orality as a cultural formation (Walter Ong, for example); and there's work in conversation analysis which focuses on turn-taking, proximity features, floor rights, etc -- a more topical and semantic focus, as opposed to the focus of a lot of the ethnography of speaking literature on poetics, phonology, prosody, sound symbolism, etc.
Anyway, if you could come back to this thread and say more about the kind of concrete phenomena in the world which interest you, and what the direction of your interests is (i.e., are you interested for fun, or are you a student or contemplating this as a field of study?) I could maybe be more helpful.
posted by fourcheesemac at 1:27 PM on April 11, 2010 [7 favorites]
There is a large and growing literature of "sound studies" (probably the best search term) across several disciplines -- anthropology,linguistics, music/ethnomusicology, cultural studies, history, technology and media studies -- from the last decade or so. Authors like Jonathan Sterne (The Audible Past) and Charles Hirschkind (The Ethics of Listening) have created what sometimes feels like a new field of study at the intersection of all these disciplines with aural culture.
If you are specifically interested in oral/ aural features of conversational discourse, you want to look at literature in the ethnography of speaking, and what has been called "musico-linguistic" ethnography.
The questions that interest you were proposed and first articulated by Edward Sapir and Roman Jakobson in the 30s-60s, theorized in crucial ways by Dell Hymes and Dennis Tedlock during the 60s and 70s, and developed during the 80s and 90s in work by Joel Sherzer, Greg Urban, Laura Graham, Richard Bauman, William Hanks, Bambi Schieffelin, Steven Feld and many others associated with a "discourse centered" approach to sociolinguistics (and as Lutoslawski suggests, I am one of those associates. If you write me by MeMail, I'll share some crucial references on which I am an author or co-author, as I'd rather not be explicit about my own identity here, because the fact is it's hard to cite the crucial recent references without citing me, if I may be un-humble for a moment. ) And of course that work is concerned with "grammar" -- but oral grammar, precisely the questions that interest you! You have to contend with the framework of grammatical theory to understand why the focus on oral (and non-discrete) features is a radical critique.
It's not entirely clear what you're looking for if by "pitch, speed, pauses," etc., you do not mean to refer to oral grammatical structures, primarily the domain of linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, and descriptive field linguistics, as well as ethnomusicology and oral literature. There is a body of work in proxemics and kinesics (Ed Hall, for example) and orality as a cultural formation (Walter Ong, for example); and there's work in conversation analysis which focuses on turn-taking, proximity features, floor rights, etc -- a more topical and semantic focus, as opposed to the focus of a lot of the ethnography of speaking literature on poetics, phonology, prosody, sound symbolism, etc.
Anyway, if you could come back to this thread and say more about the kind of concrete phenomena in the world which interest you, and what the direction of your interests is (i.e., are you interested for fun, or are you a student or contemplating this as a field of study?) I could maybe be more helpful.
posted by fourcheesemac at 1:27 PM on April 11, 2010 [7 favorites]
Because, actually, the central claim in discourse-centered sociolinguistics is (to paraphrase your title) that "how people sound" is as much a part of meaning as "what people speak." In oral discourse, there is no distinction to be made there.
posted by fourcheesemac at 1:31 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by fourcheesemac at 1:31 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]
Best answer: The concept of prosody might be helpful.
posted by cloudburst at 1:41 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by cloudburst at 1:41 PM on April 11, 2010 [1 favorite]
Response by poster:
The field interests me as a research topic. Although I am in computer science, I am fascinated by how people "sound" (so to speak) from a cultural experience. I think, being multilingual makes one aware of the phenomenon even more. Currently I am looking to absorb everything in this field and then find my research direction.
By "aural qualities", I mean:
- how loud (and variation of loudness),
- how fast,
- if it's a conversation, do speakers overlap often
- gaps between words/sentences
etc. Basically everything in speech except the meanings of the words.
I am interested in several aspects, but overall: what characteristic aural qualities are shared by spoken artifacts from a language, a culture, a country, ... What communal and personal qualities might a set of qualities reflect? Can we identify the source (culture, language, nation) of an artifact from these qualities? If qualities are shared between two languages, cultures, etc., can we say that they share some other qualities?
Sorry about the amateurishness of my writing in this matter. I just find this very exciting (along with regular linguistics).
posted by raheel at 4:02 PM on April 11, 2010
"Because, actually, the central claim in discourse-centered sociolinguistics is (to paraphrase your title) that "how people sound" is as much a part of meaning as "what people speak." In oral discourse, there is no distinction to be made there."Aah! Makes so much sense.
The field interests me as a research topic. Although I am in computer science, I am fascinated by how people "sound" (so to speak) from a cultural experience. I think, being multilingual makes one aware of the phenomenon even more. Currently I am looking to absorb everything in this field and then find my research direction.
By "aural qualities", I mean:
- how loud (and variation of loudness),
- how fast,
- if it's a conversation, do speakers overlap often
- gaps between words/sentences
etc. Basically everything in speech except the meanings of the words.
I am interested in several aspects, but overall: what characteristic aural qualities are shared by spoken artifacts from a language, a culture, a country, ... What communal and personal qualities might a set of qualities reflect? Can we identify the source (culture, language, nation) of an artifact from these qualities? If qualities are shared between two languages, cultures, etc., can we say that they share some other qualities?
Sorry about the amateurishness of my writing in this matter. I just find this very exciting (along with regular linguistics).
posted by raheel at 4:02 PM on April 11, 2010
Yes, this is linguistics. You will be interested in research around intonation patterns and length between conversational turns. Check out sociolinguistics as well.
posted by heatherann at 9:31 AM on April 17, 2010
posted by heatherann at 9:31 AM on April 17, 2010
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