an ear for education: the sonic mode of address in education studies (review essay)

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An ear for education: the sonic mode of address in education studies (review essay) Christopher Drew Ó The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. 2013 James Deaville (ed.): Music in television: channels of listening, Routledge, New York, 2011, 244 pp, AU$32.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-88136-4 Norrie Neumark, Ross Gibson, and Theo van Leeuwen (eds.): Voice: vocal aesthetics in digital arts and media, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2010, 357 pp, AU$40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-262-01390-1 Two recent texts, Music in television (Deaville 2011a) and Voice (Neumark et al. 2010) remind readers that sounds are integral to the construction of meaning. At the beginning of the twenty-first century in Australian schools, audio-visual digital texts are flourishing. As multimodal texts continue to be produced online, and television and film remain central to popular culture, the sonic mode of address remains important in the processes of meaning-making. The two texts examined here, Voice and Music in television offer insights into the role of sound at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Both texts justify their emergence as opportunities to revitalise attention to sounds in the twenty-first century—a time in which digital and online texts are becoming increasingly important aspects of everyday life. In this review essay, the contributions of these two texts to the literature on sound studies are discussed, and their potential value to education scholars outlined. These texts bring to light the importance of sounds, and philosophical questions about authenticity and meaning of sound, in a digitised world. Within the body of literature in education studies that has examined audio-visual media texts, many scholars have argued that the ways education is represented in media can affect social discourses of education and schooling (Hickey and Austin 2006; Kenway and Bullen 2001). In the Australian context, for example, Hickey and Austin (2006) consider the role that audio-visual media has in (re)shaping discourses of the student, the teacher and the institution of Australian schooling (Hickey and Austin 2006; Kenway and Bullen 2001). Children’s and adults’ C. Drew (&) Australian Catholic University, 25a Barker Road, Strathfield 2135, Australia e-mail: [email protected] 123 Aust. Educ. Res. DOI 10.1007/s13384-013-0114-z

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Page 1: An ear for education: the sonic mode of address in education studies (review essay)

An ear for education: the sonic mode of addressin education studies (review essay)

Christopher Drew

� The Australian Association for Research in Education, Inc. 2013

James Deaville (ed.): Music in television: channels of listening, Routledge, New

York, 2011, 244 pp, AU$32.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-88136-4

Norrie Neumark, Ross Gibson, and Theo van Leeuwen (eds.): Voice: vocal

aesthetics in digital arts and media, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2010, 357 pp, AU$40.00

(cloth), ISBN 978-0-262-01390-1

Two recent texts, Music in television (Deaville 2011a) and Voice (Neumark et al.

2010) remind readers that sounds are integral to the construction of meaning. At the

beginning of the twenty-first century in Australian schools, audio-visual digital texts

are flourishing. As multimodal texts continue to be produced online, and television

and film remain central to popular culture, the sonic mode of address remains

important in the processes of meaning-making. The two texts examined here, Voice

and Music in television offer insights into the role of sound at the beginning of the

twenty-first century. Both texts justify their emergence as opportunities to revitalise

attention to sounds in the twenty-first century—a time in which digital and online

texts are becoming increasingly important aspects of everyday life. In this review

essay, the contributions of these two texts to the literature on sound studies are

discussed, and their potential value to education scholars outlined. These texts bring

to light the importance of sounds, and philosophical questions about authenticity

and meaning of sound, in a digitised world.

Within the body of literature in education studies that has examined audio-visual

media texts, many scholars have argued that the ways education is represented in

media can affect social discourses of education and schooling (Hickey and Austin

2006; Kenway and Bullen 2001). In the Australian context, for example, Hickey and

Austin (2006) consider the role that audio-visual media has in (re)shaping

discourses of the student, the teacher and the institution of Australian schooling

(Hickey and Austin 2006; Kenway and Bullen 2001). Children’s and adults’

C. Drew (&)

Australian Catholic University, 25a Barker Road, Strathfield 2135, Australia

e-mail: [email protected]

123

Aust. Educ. Res.

DOI 10.1007/s13384-013-0114-z

Page 2: An ear for education: the sonic mode of address in education studies (review essay)

television programs, advertising texts and news reports on television and online

variously construct and reconstruct schools and schooling subjects (Hickey and

Austin 2006). These texts have a significant function in helping text consumers

come to know education and schooling. Furthermore, some education scholars have

argued that such audio-visual texts—including film and television texts—are public

pedagogues (Ellsworth 2005; Giroux 2004). These scholars argue that film and

television can be ‘‘powerful teaching machines’’ (Giroux 2002, p. 2). When

examining twenty-first century audio-visual texts, it becomes apparent that the sonic

mode of address is a central component of their meaning-making capacities.

Similarly, proponents of media literacy (Cole and Pullen 2010; Buckingham

2003) stress that multimedia have become ‘‘the major contemporary means of

cultural expression and communication’’ (Buckingham 2003, p. 5). Given that most

students will have regular contact with audio-visual media throughout their lives,

media literacy scholars posit that it is important for students to have the ability to

interpret sonic address. Multi-literacy pedagogies highlight the importance of

raising children with a critical approach to the ways multiple modes of address—

including the sonic mode—work to influence the meanings produced at the

intersection of text and respondent (Buckingham 2003). Students need to have the

ability to ‘‘interpret and make informed judgements’’ (Buckingham 2003, p. 5)

about multimodal texts and to understand that these texts construct selective visions

of the world. Therein, educators are called to be literate with multiple modes of

address, so that they may teach multi-literacies to their students (Cole and Pullen

2010).

Sounds in the school environment are often assigned a certain stigma as

antithetical to learning, and therefore sound is dominantly perceived negatively

within educational spaces (Gershon 2011; Klatte et al. 2010). However,

ethnographic studies of school spaces, particularly, often highlight the ways

sound functions in educational environments as a teaching device—both positively

and negatively (Gershon 2011; Klatte et al. 2010). Environmental sounds can

distract, but collateral learning also takes place as a result of environmental

sounds in the school context. Ethnographic studies of the everyday noises of the

classroom, and students’ and teachers’ relations with those noises, can be

revealing of the ways sounds are central to the production of an educational

environment (Gershon 2011).

Lastly, I would argue that the discipline of sound studies is of particular

relevance to music education scholars and practitioners, where sound is of central

concern (Wright 2010; Mark 2013). The discipline of sound studies provides

useful tools for examining the ways music conveys meanings and produces

knowledge. Music has the capacity to incite students’ passions and emotions, but

also has the capacity to reproduce and challenge power hierarchies (Wright 2010).

Being an inherently social practice, music is integral to many students’

experiences of life and understandings about the structure of the world. By

engaging with sound studies’ theoretical work on sound as a knowledge producer,

music education scholars stand to benefit from its insights into the intersection of

music, meaning and identity.

C. Drew

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Sound studies

Sound studies is an interdisciplinary field of analysis, which has been taken up

variously in media studies, cultural studies, and education semiotics (Gershon

2011). Derrida’s critique of western phonocentrism is of particular influence in

contemporary analyses of sound. In Of Grammatology (1974), Derrida famously

critiques the western idea that writing is a practice that merely imitates and parodies

voice. He argues that this proposition implies that spoken word is a pure and

unmediated practice. Such an approach privileges the voice as a way of representing

the Self authentically, in contrast to the inauthenticity of the written word. Rather,

Derrida concerns himself with the ways speech is also a subjective sociocultural

practice (Derrida 1996). Here, Derrida paves the way for examinations of the voice

as an interpretive and imprecise practice, rather than a pure and foundational way of

representing the Self.

Similarly, Barthes (1977, 1985) was a central figure in influencing a semiotic

approach to sounds. Bathes’ examinations of the ‘grain of the voice’, introduces the

idea that the voice bears the marks of the body. He describes the grain of the voice

as ‘‘the body in the voice as it sings’’ (Barthes 1977, p. 181). This introduces a way

of examining human sounds, but music particularly, not only as language practice,

but also as ‘‘the encounter between language and a voice’’ (Barthes 1977, p. 181).

Such an approach is used within both Voice and Music in television to examine the

embodiment, and indeed potential disembodiment, of subjectivities within digital

texts. Twenty-first century digital reproductions of human sounds proffer new

questions about authenticity when sounds are digitally remastered, becoming altered

copies of altered copies. These digital copies of sounds, nonetheless, carry with

them a grain of the voice, as well as subjective and embodied meanings, albeit far

removed from the body itself (Neumark 2010).

Following Barthes and Derrida, sound studies has developed as a discipline that

examines sound as a socio-cultural practice that is of equal importance and

relevance as the visual. Schafer (1977) proved a formative figure in sound studies

through his development of the concept of soundscapes. He argued for an

examination of environmental sounds as musical pieces which can be analysed in a

manner somewhat akin to the visual analysis of landscapes. Landscapes have

landmarks where soundscapes have soundmarks; landscapes have foregrounds

where soundscapes have sound signals; landscapes have backgrounds where

soundscapes have keynotes (Schafer 1977). In this way, banal and commonplace

soundscapes should be heard like landscapes are seen—with socio-cultural

meanings that can be examined and understood. Sound studies further developed

with the introduction of Acoustemology, primarily through the works of Feld (1991,

2005). Acoustemology is a term developed from the phrases ‘acoustic’ and

‘epistemology’, and is used to show how sounds can produce knowledge and

understandings of the world. Acoustemology highlights that sound is central to

meaning-making, and has the capacity to mediate social and cultural ways of

knowing. Such a phrase emphasises the importance of sound as a social and cultural

meaning-making practice (Feld 2005).

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Sound studies also influences semiotic and social semiotic methodologies (Kress

and van Leeuwen 1996). Building on Barthes’ works particularly, social semiotic

methodologies of the late twentieth century considered how multiple modes of

address in a communication event such as the visual, sonic, written and motive,

contribute to the meaning of the event (Hodge and Kress 1988; Kress and van

Leeuwen 1996). Semiotic methodologies are used to examine multiple genres of

texts including print texts, films and television (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996).

While the sonic semiotic mode had been overshadowed by the focus on the visual

semiotic mode in keystone social semiotic methodological texts of the 1980s and

1990s such as Social Semiotics (Hodge and Kress 1988) and Reading Images: the

grammar of visual design (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996), recent social semiotic

texts have marked a significant (re)turn to considerations of the sonic mode of

address (Cranny-Francis 2005; van Leeuwen 1999; Kress and van Leeuwen 2000;

Neumark 2010). Indeed, it is telling that Theo van Leeuwen, one of the central

theorists within social semiotics in the late twentieth century, and co-editor of

Voice, is using Voice to pause and focus specifically on the sonic mode of address.

Sound studies in a digital age

The two recent texts examined here, Music in television (Deaville 2011a) and Voice

(Neumark et al. 2010), continue discussion of sound through their collections of

essays on the role of music and voice in the meaning-making process. Music in

television considers sound to be a ‘‘fascinating and important aspect of our culture’’

(Deaville 2011b, p. 3). As a semiotic signifier on television, music is an

‘‘atmospheric cue that gives a sense of mood, location, or ambiance’’ (Stilwell

2011, p. 123). Music in television contributes to the academic literature on sonic

modes of address by offering focussed analyses of the role of music in the creation

of meaning, an often overlooked aspect of meaning creation on television (Deaville

2011b). The essays in Music in television cover multiple genres of television

programs such as rural American shows, variety programs, news programs, science

fiction shows and western dramas. Voice, meanwhile, considers the grain and

intonation of the spoken word as integral to the construction of both represented and

embodied subjectivities of the speakers (Neumark 2010). Positioning itself as a

timely text at the turn of the digital age, Voice considers the interaction between

voices and digital texts, offering insights into issues of the authenticity and

performativity of digitally recorded voices. Together, the two texts provide an

overview of the ways sounds are theorised in an increasingly digitised world, while

also providing clear examples of how this theoretical work might be applied in

scholarly practice.

In Music in television, James Deaville (2011a, b) brings together essays on

television music by various cultural and media scholars who consider music to be a

central component of meaning production on television. Deaville argues that the

collection of essays in Music in television is a timely addition to television studies

as, to date, ‘‘television studies ignores music’’ (Gorbman 2011, p. ix). Music in

television thus positions itself as filling a void in the television studies literature by

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drawing academic attention to the importance of music in conveying meaning on

television. Many of the methodological points presented in this text about musical

connotations are not new, however. Extant texts on the semiotics of music have

already offered many of the fundamental semiotic methods utilised here (see:

Cranny-Francis 2005; Caldwell 2005). The value of this text is not in ground-

breaking insights into sound studies, therefore, but rather in building understanding

of how already extant methods might be utilised in television studies.

Through their explorations, the essays in Music in television show the ways

music acts as a cue to audiences to keep them informed about the programs they

are watching and the ‘‘cultural positions’’ (Deaville 2011b, p. 2) that the programs

legitimise. A highlight of Music in television is Saffle’s Chapter 4 essay on rural

music on American television, which provides insights into the interrelationship

between acoustic music and country-westerns. The importance of music in

constructing meaning is excellently explained in his discussion of the ways the

pace of music can set the scene. He discusses, for example, the way upbeat

acoustic music can act as a metaphor for the trotting of horses. Similarly,

Stillwell’s Chapter 6 essay on music in Dr Who explains how musical scores can

be attached to specific characters and events. Stillwell explains that ‘‘ethereal’’ (p.

130) music is often used in scenes with the ‘‘cool’’ (p. 130) Doctor Who. This is

juxtaposed to the ‘‘earthy tones’’ (p. 130) used in scenes with his human and

mortal love interest, Rose. Here, not only do tones act as cues to the appearance

of characters, but they convey meaning about the gendered subjectivities of those

characters. The feminine lover is connected to the earth by the use of earthy tones,

while the masculine doctor is constructed as cool and mysterious through the use

of ethereal music. These essays on the meaning-making propensity of music offer

stimulating insights for the education researcher. The argument that cultural

connotations such as masculinity and femininity can be signified by music offers

the researcher insights into the ways music might function in the representation

and construction of subjectivities. For education researchers, paying attention to

the music when students, parents, schools and teachers and principals are depicted

on screen will help to explain how schooling subjectivities are constructed in

audio-visual texts. Similarly, having students recognise the capacity of the sonic

mode of address to construct characters’ subjectivities is an important part of their

competency with multi-literacies.

Music in television’s Chapter 8 essay (Coates 2011) on the intersection of music,

television and popular culture was a particularly stimulating read and will provided

food for thought for the education semiotician. The chapter explores the political

reaction to the 1965 American television program It’s What’s Happening, Baby!

that was used to promote a job training program to ‘‘high-school dropouts’’ (Coates

2011, p. 165). The chapter discusses conservative resistance in the 1960s to the use

of rock and roll music on television to appeal to the baby boomer youth. Here, the

essay examines the musical program as an element of the ‘‘culture wars’’ (Coates

2011, p. 177) of the 1960s. Popular high school musical-style programs today such

as Glee could similarly be considered as an element of the culture wars of the 2010s.

The messages the music in contemporary high school musical programs—including

issues such as gay and lesbian rights and teenage pregnancy—could reveal much

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about contemporary cultural and educational discourses. Education scholars could

play an important role in continuing and expanding the discussions begun here.

Music in television is particularly useful for beginning and early career scholars

interested in the social conventions of sounds—the book can function as an example

of how to write about the sonic signifying practices of audio-visual texts. The

discussions are accessible to seasoned academics and undergraduates alike. For

education scholars studying multimodal texts, this book offers insights into the

cultural, political and social (Deaville 2011b) functions of music. Education

scholars can take from the book insights into how music makes meanings about

characters and places, and apply these insights in studies of the representation of

school, teachers, students and so forth in audio-visual texts. As Deaville explains,

‘‘Music in Television: Channels of Listening can perhaps best fulfil its own role by

encouraging further study, whether along the lines explored in this volume or from

new perspectives.’’ (2011b, p. 2). When reading this book from an education

perspective, education scholars will surely be inspired to pay attention to the sonic

mode of address in their explorations the construction of schooling and education

discourses in audio-visual texts.

The second text considered here, Voice (Neumark et al. 2010), explores the sonic

mode of address through a collection of essays about how the voice constructs

meaning. Whereas Music in television discusses the centrality of music in the

production of meaning in texts, Voice focusses on the relationship between the

human voice and subjectivity. A recurrent theme throughout the text is the issue of

authenticity of the voice in digital texts. Such a focus on digital texts is timely

considering the emergence and growth of audio and audio-visual digital technol-

ogies such as podcasts, vlogs (video logs) and YouTube in the past decade. Many of

the chapters consider the ways that in emergent digital texts, including YouTube

and podcasting which suggest an authentic and unedited relationship between the

producer and consumer, the voice is nonetheless performative: the voice acts to

construct subjectivities.

Many of the initial essays in Voice focus on the production of the human voice

through digital technologies including voicemail, podcasts and musical instruments.

Central to these essays is theoretical considerations of the relationship between

representation of the human voice and meaning creation. Digital recreations and

recordings of voices through podcasts, radio, mechanical piano sounds, and so forth

are removed from bodies, but nonetheless carry with them meanings and implied

subjectivities—voices ‘‘carry the traces of their bodies with them’’ (Madsen and

Potts 2010, p. 33). Madsen and Potts’ Chapter 3 exploration of podcasting, a

communication technology which has emerged as a result of consumers’ desires for

mobility and accessibility of radio-style audio programs, is a highlight. The chapter

discusses not only the genealogy of the podcast, but also the ways voice is used to

convey meaning. The ‘‘intimate expression of … character’’ (Madsen and Potts

2010, p. 45) through voice constructs atmosphere and conveys meaning about the

characteristics of the unseen speaker. Of particular interest in this chapter to the

education scholar is Madsen and Potts’ recognition that ‘‘cultural and educational

institutions internationally are taking up podcasting as ways of expanding their

voice’’ (2010, p. 50). They cite some American universities’ use of podcasting to

C. Drew

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incite ‘‘intellectual debate’’ (Madsen and Potts 2010, p. 51). This relationship

between education and emergent digital voice technologies warrants further

exploration by education scholars.

Throughout Voice, the essayists return to issues of vocal authenticity in digital

texts. In his Chapter 6 essay on the voice in digital texts, for example, Neumark

discusses the grain of the voice as performative. The grain of the voice does not

simply represent a speaker, but also has an active role in constructing the speaker’s

identity. Here, Neumark considers the ways vocal tones considered to be

homosexual can unsettle gender. Similarly, performativity of the voice is

engagingly discussed in a poetic chapter by disc jockey Mark Amerika (2010)

who reflects on his own art as theft of extant work. Amerika’s reflexive poetic piece

considers his voice as always ‘‘a conversational mix sampling heavily/from the

styles of many other artists’’ (2010, p. 196). Voice is identity work for Amerika; yet,

he sees no authenticity in his voice, vis-a-vis his identity. To Amerika (2010), voice

and identity are both remixes of others’ work. Voice’s emphasis on the

performativity of the voice offers the education scholar a chance to reflect on the

ways our voices are social and cultural formations. The vocal performativity of the

teacher, the student and the parent is worthy of analysis. The performative voice in

educational discourses can reveal much to the education researcher about the

politics of power. The theoretical explorations in Voice can surely be used as

foundations for such examinations of voice in educational discourses.

As Voice progresses, discussion turns to the construction of authentic character

identities in digital texts such as computer games, where animated characters are

made to appear to have human characteristics through the use of recorded voices. In

these instances, ‘‘the voice is often seen as reintroducing an element of authentic

humanity in a world cluttered with machine-born artefacts and animations’’

(Neumark et al. 2010, p. 209). Chapters 14 and 15 on voices in computer games

prove a particularly stimulating read. They offer insights into the ways the use of

human voice and vocal noises in games ‘‘strongly affects the suturing of the player

into the game universe’’ (Stockburger 2010, p. 296). As an educational researcher,

the chapters stimulated my thinking about the ways voice functions in educational

computer games and online gaming sites for students. Further, from an educational

perspective, the introduction of the concepts of public pedagogy and audio-visual

texts as pedagogues (Giroux 2004; Ellsworth 2005) to the conversations started in

the discussions in Voice could contribute significantly to textual analyses of audio-

visual texts. How might the voices in computer games act as public pedagogues?

For the education scholar, the theoretical discussions in Voice will provide useful

and stimulating foundations for studying the sonic mode of address. There are many

opportunities for education scholars to explore the ways educators, educational

institutions, teachers, students, parents and media have utilised digital technologies

to record and remix voices—from YouTube to podcasts to television. This book

provides an interesting read for scholars engaged in such explorations, offering them

insights into the ways voices in digital technologies carry with them sonic

meanings. The theoretical underpinning of the text—which consider voice as

performative and the grain of the voice as revealing of the speaker’s subjectivity—

provide the reader with a framework for further analysis. Voice reminds the

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researcher that the grain of the voice cannot be overlooked when coming to make

meaning of the spoken word in digital and online texts.

As audio-visual texts continue to emerge online, on television and in the cinema,

scholars may find it instructive to pay attention to the ways the sonic mode of

address can shape experiences of texts. As educational institutions continue to

develop audio-visual texts (Madsen and Potts 2010) and audio-visual texts in

popular culture continue to construct discourses of students, teachers and schools

(Hickey and Austin 2006; Kenway and Bullen 2001), scholarly space remains open

for researchers to examine the discursive capacity of audio-visual texts to shape the

education subject’s experiences of education and schooling. As Music in television

and Voice remind their readers, sound studies remains a rich and alluring discipline

at a time when audio-visual and digital texts are flourishing.

References

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(Eds.), Voice: Vocal aesthetics in digital arts and media. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Barthes, R. (1977). Image, music, text. New York: Hill and Wang.

Barthes, R. (1985). The grain of the voice: Interviews 1962-1980 (L. Coverdale, Trans.). London:

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Author Biography

Christopher Drew is a PhD candidate at the Australian Catholic University in the School of Education.

His PhD utilises social semiotic and discourse analytic methodologies to examine the ways education,

studenthood and national identities are represented in Australian television advertisements. He has used

social semiotics to publish in the areas of childhood studies, education studies, cultural studies and media

studies.

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