The subjective mediation of sound underlines the constant possibility it contains to be misheard or misinterpreted. Taking the force and affect of sounds into account highlights the constructive cultural potential of their ambiguity; the distance between the intended and received meaning of a sound may prove to be culturally and analytically fertile. Take the example of inarticulable sounds: in the absence of a clear meaning they nonetheless exert force that prefigures any symbolic significance but can nonetheless elicit certain responses and are liable to being misheard or misinterpreted. This multiplies their potential meanings and highlights the potential cultural significance of ambiguity.
These potential misunderstandings have important cultural value as they open possibilities for new kinds of exchange and meaning-making (Carter, 2020). In instances where identical translations of terms of reference are not necessarily clear, listening and trying to communicate becomes a form of “cultural production.” By contrast, the prejudice for clear “precise and exhaustive” unequivocal signs and direct translations urge the appropriation and assimilation of sounds most often “in the interest of acquisition” (ibid.). Carter recounts the example of colonial encounters and the development of pidgins which involve “continual linguistic compromises” at moments of linguistic and cultural collision to construct grammars and vocabularies that are intelligible to both speech communities. This learned second grammar represents an in-between, carved out by admissions of each and the incentive for mutual understanding. This demonstrates the communicative potential and cultural relevance of ambiguity as “dialogic mutual misunderstandings” prompt new signs, grammars, and modes of understanding to emerge (ibid.). It also pushes the need to attend to the “inner-speech of history/culture” and the underlying understandings left out of direct translations. The value of this endeavour is not reducible to a “semantic yield,” it highlights the limits of mimicry and communication and “insists” on the truth and value in ambiguity (ibid.)
Mishearing, similarly, is not necessarily an obstacle to communication but also a possible enrichment of it. If ambiguity is culturally relevant and constructive, revealing instances of slippage is both methodologically and analytically valuable. Increased methodological transparency over this process is responsive to the crisis of representation and the critical questions that it raises over authorial authority, reflexivity, and the creative construction of accounts. This encourages ethnography to embrace a wider range of voices into final accounts, admit greater transparency over the dialogic process and creation of accounts, and explore alternate mechanisms for representation.
Works Cited
- Carter, Paul. (2004). Ambiguous Traces, Mishearing, and Auditory Space. In Erlmann, Veit. Hearing Cultures. Berg. Ch. 3 43-63