Browsing by Subject "Listening"

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Dem is drunk through the ears: sound, space, and listening in Alevi collective worship ritual
(2016-05) Kreger, Alexander Colin; Seeman, Sonia Tamar, 1958-; Dell'Antonio, Andrew; Moin, Azfar
In Turkey, Alevi social and religious identity is often constructed in conscious opposition to institutionalized Sunni Islam. Sound is an important medium by which the relationship of violence and resistance between Alevis and the Sunni state is produced and perpetuated. This paper focuses on the ways in which Alevi aural dispositions and spatial constructions constitute and reinforce one another. These auralities and spacialities are rehearsed and disciplined within the context of collective worship rituals [cem or muhabbet], but play a broader role in molding and thus preserving the Alevi community as a religious minority under the threat of assimilation. In particular, I examine how Alevis map space by cultivating listening habits based on oppositions of interior and exterior, private and public, and esoteric and exoteric. Two Alevi concepts play especially prominent roles in regulating the relationship between sound and space. Dem refers to the divine power which resides in the words, voice, and breath of spiritually mature individuals. It is also the name for the alcohol Alevis may drink as part of their collective worship services. With the idea of dem, Alevis draw a link between listening and the acquisition of knowledge on the one hand, and drinking and interiority on the other that is embodied in the phrase “dem is drunk by the ears” [dem kulaktan içilir]. Just as tea is said to steep [demlenmek], Alevis steep—discipline themselves as Alevi subjects—during muhabbet by listening to words of wisdom spoken or sung by spiritually mature individuals. Meanwhile, dem is emplaced through its association with a face, or didar. The Alevi fixation on didar creates spatial orientations also experienced as listening vectors linking people together. Instead of facing towards Mecca while praying, Alevis face towards one another because they see God as the human being him/herself, and the beauty of God as reflected in the beauty of the human countenance. As a result, Alevi spiritual landscapes strikingly different from those of Sunni Islam, in which prayer is oriented towards a single, remote point.
The effect of prior knowledge on listening comprehension in ESL class discussions
(2004) Madden, John Patrick; Garza, Thomas J.
Previous research in second language listening comprehension has considered the role of prior knowledge in listening to texts that are presented by a single speaker. Despite this, second language learners commonly encounter situations in which they must understand what more than one speaker is saying, whether in the language classroom, the academy, or the workplace. In addition, prior knowledge for text type has been argued to support second language listening, though the genre of discussion has been overlooked as a text type. This study investigated the hypotheses that prior knowledge of the topic of a discussion would aid comprehension of that discussion, that greater listening skill would result in greater comprehension of a discussion, that topic prior knowledge and listening skill would interact to support comprehension, and that familiarity with the discussion form would support understanding a discussion. Participants recruited from an intensive English program were assigned to experimental and control conditions. Topic prior knowledge was operationalized by allowing the experimental group to hear a portion of an audiotaped text that was used as the basis for a videotaped discussion among three native English speakers. To measure comprehension of the videotaped discussion, research participants distinguished statements made in the video from distracters, wrote recalls of the video, and made predictions about what they would hear next. Participants took a listening assessment and completed a survey about their experience learning English and their familiarity with and attitudes about discussion. Results showed that participants familiar with the discussion form understood more of the videotaped discussion than did participants unfamiliar with discussion. Better listeners understood more of the videotaped discussion than did less skilled listeners. Prior knowledge of topic was not found to be a significant predictor of success in understanding discussions. No interaction was found between topic prior knowledge and listening skill. Teaching and research implications are presented.
Enduring character : the problem with authenticity and the persistence of ethos
(2013-12) Dieter, Eric Matthew, 1976-; Roberts-Miller, Patricia, 1959-
This dissertation is interested in how people talk about character in a variety of public spheres. Specifically, it explores the tangled relationship between authenticity and ethos, or what is taken as the distinction between intrinsic and constructed character. While this dissertation does not presume to settle the question of authenticity’s actuality, it does discuss the ways authenticity cues in rhetorical acts continue to influence how “sincere character” in those acts is understood, even as audiences exhibit shrewdness in recognizing that character is a purposeful manifestation of the rhetor. The fundamental phenomenon this dissertation seeks to describe is how people, with better and worse success, negotiate the dissonance between valuing character as authentic and as presentation and representation. Character in this view is a much richer and more paradoxical concept than many discussions of the term admit. A too-diluted study of ethos limited strictly to pinpointing credibility in an argument makes it difficult to articulate why an exhibition of character sometimes works and sometimes flops. Ethos in its fullest complexity is, and is not, constructed by any single act; it is the consequence of narratives, both of those narratives, and also what we say about those narratives; it is something we know about a rhetor, at the same time that it comes from what the rhetor claims to know; it is, most important, an appeal to authenticity, even when we know ethos is discursively, kairotically, and socially constructed. This dissertation offers an expanded definition of ethos as rhetorical transactions that rhetors and audiences mutually negotiate in order to determine the extent to which all sides will have their rhetorical needs met, and the extent to which all sides can assent to the those needs. The dissertation, using the works of Wayne Booth, Kenneth Burke, and Chaïm Perelman as its primary theoretical structures, offers pedagogic implications for these mutual negotiations.
Learning through listening : how collaborative discourse contributes to individual learning in small group work
(2012-05) Vogler, Jane Susan; Schallert, Diane L.; Svinicki, Marilla; Emmer, Edmund; Maloch, Anna E.; Restad, Penne
Aligned with socio-constructivist views of learning, small groups are being adopted as a viable and valid instructional technique with increasing enthusiasm. Previous research has shown that learning outcomes for students who have participated in small groups is inconsistent at best, and that small groups function differently even when working on identical tasks within the same classroom. Consequently, researchers continue to try and tease apart the ways in which effective small groups function and how small group participation influences individual learning. In this study, I explored the nature of listening within a small group learning context with the purposes of understanding how listening behaviors in the group were related to individual learning outcomes and gaining further insights into small group functions. This qualitative study was embedded within a college level history course for which the instructor had assigned students to permanent teams diverse in terms of gender, degree major, and class rank (i.e., freshman to senior status). Data collection and analysis focused on a subset of these teams and centered on group discussions that took place across two class days just past the semester’s midpoint. Data sources included: observational field notes, individual interviews, individually-written essays, synchronized audio/video recordings of team discussions, and team activity sheets. Data analysis was progressive, inductive, and micro-analytical in nature, using discourse analysis of the discussions and topic analysis of the essays to derive themes and code ideas. As indicated by individual interviews as well as an analysis of what individuals said and did during the small group discussion, listening indicators included verbal and nonverbal responses. A systematic analysis of the individually-written essays alongside a coded transcript of the team discussion revealed that topics included in the essay were ideas discussed by the group and were aligned with indicators of listening. Analyses of all data showed that listening contributes to the way the groups functioned, helping to explain the differences in team interactions.
Looking beyond the visual: considering multi-sensory experience and education with video art in installation
(2010-05) Spont, Marya Helen; Bolin, Paul Erik, 1954-; Mayer, Melinda M.
This study problematizes how the history, theory, and practice of art education (as documented) have predominantly focused on visually-based artworks and on visual aspects of other, multi-sensory artworks. I posit that existing pedagogical approaches become particularly limiting when addressing contemporary artworks that engage multiple senses and question how art educators might adapt such paradigms to consider individual learners’ multi-sensory experiences—particularly, aural, bodily, and spatial, as well as visual, experiences—as they operate in relation to video art in installation. To offer a point of reference for subsequent discussion, I narrate and interpret my own multi-sensory experience of Krzysztof Wodiczko’s "...OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project" (2009), and then situate both visual and non-visual aspects of my experience in relation to various possible experiences of time, still and changing images, sound, the static or mobile body, other bodies, and space. By synthesizing and building upon recent scholarly literature pertaining to interpretation, multi-sensory and bodily experience, and learner-centered pedagogy, I consider theoretical and practical implications for teaching and learning with video art in installation, and recommend art educators’ mediation through creating communities of questioning, listening, and “speaking with,” in addition to looking. Throughout this study, I argue that encouraging learners to interpret their individual bodily and sensory experiences of artworks should be considered an essential part of the process of making meaning of those artworks in art education environments and, more importantly, of the process of helping learners to become more critically aware of their own sensory experiences in the world.
Reimagined family ties : redressing memory through photography in the work of Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Aline Motta and Juliana dos Santos
(2022-08-12) Fernandez, Maria Emilia, M.A.; Nelson, Adele
This thesis investigates the work of Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Aline Motta and Juliana dos Santos, three contemporary Brazilian artists who are proposing different ways of looking at the past while also addressing the interlocking forms of oppression at work in the present. Through their collaborations with relatives and ancestors, in which photography plays a crucial role, the artists reflect on the colonial trauma of over three centuries of genocide, slavery and colonization in Brazil. However, I argue that they go beyond that, proposing a way of reimagining frameworks of kinship as a form of redress. By articulating new lines of descent that constitute a (re)membering of those fragmented narratives that remain in the archives, I contend that the artists are addressing present structural, everyday racism while also performing and expanding the possibilities of inhabiting the future. In establishing a relation between their artistic practices, this thesis analyzes the ways they appeal to personal and collective memories brought to the foreground in family photographic records to conceive paths towards repairing, or at least naming, the wounds inflicted by the forms of class, gender and race violence that continue to plague the country. Moreover, this text reveals how their works invite a rearrangement of our perception of time and contribute to a critique of linear temporality, evincing the falseness of any narrative of the past as single, stable and flowing in only one direction. My research is guided by questions such as: How can photography serve as a medium of fabulation and of imagining family ties across time and space? If photographs help constitute a family’s affective archive, how can these intergenerational dialogues become a form of thinking about the future and inventing new lines of filiation? Furthermore, how can these gestures signal the way, if not toward healing, towards an ever-incomplete practice of redress?
Sound off! : recording voice and the racial politics of American experimental poetry
(2018-05) Boruszak, Jeffrey Kyle; Moore, Lisa L. (Lisa Lynne); Bennett, Chad, 1976-; Bremen, Brian; Clement, Tanya; Jones, Meta
The racial politics of the avant-garde is one of the dominant and most urgent issues in twenty-first century American poetry. Non-white poets often find themselves excluded from contemporary avant-garde circles, historical narratives of avant-garde practices frequently occlude their contributions, and avant-garde poets rarely include anti-racist rhetoric and principles in their poems. In recent years, the anti-lyric critiques posed by the avant-garde Language poets in the 1980s and 1990s drew increased attention for their role in racially segregating experimental and formally innovative writers. Poetic voice, the rejection of which is a cardinal principle of anti-lyric, became a central figure in these discussions. Yet given that voice can refer to the phenomenal act of speaking as well as serve as a common figure for an individual poet’s style and tone, the nature of the links between voice and race in poetry remain unclear. This dissertation therefore incorporates current trends in the scholarly field of sound studies by attending to postwar American poets who use technology for sound recording and reproduction in their work in order to isolate voice as an object of intense scrutiny. By analyzing the Vietnam-era “auto poesy” of Allen Ginsberg, the dystopian specter colonialism in poems by Cathy Park Hong, and the typographical experiments of Douglas Kearney, this project engages both analog and digital recording technologies and their applications as compositional processes, structural metaphors, and aesthetic influences. Rather than focus on how voice is produced in the acts of speaking and writing, I engage the cultural norms that code sounds and inform human listening practices in order to argue that voice is dynamic, fluid, and contextual. Given their significant overlap in political commitments, acknowledging the whiteness of the avant-garde suggests the possibility of creating a broader and more inclusive coalition of experimental poets whose combined efforts can bring about desirable shifts in political, pedagogical, and publishing norms
Target language captioned video for second language listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition
(2014-12) Cano, Clarissa Ysel; Pulido, Diana C.
This report surveys existing literature in order to determine how best to implement target language captioned video in a classroom of a particular context: a Korean church in the U.S. whose members desire to improve their English language ability for the purpose of sharing the gospel of resurrection in English. In order to gain insight into the benefits and limitations of target language captioned video on second language listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition and thus how to use the learning tool optimally, literature is reviewed regarding word knowledge, processing strategies, and reported gains or effects of the use of captioned video. Then, incorporating the information gleaned from the literature, two sample lesson plans are presented utilizing the C-Channel English testimony videos as the primary tool for instruction.