ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on how the acoustic community of Dollar has transformed sonically over the last quarter of a century and more specifically concentrates on the how the members of the micro community of the local Strathdevon Primary School listen to and construct their sonic environments. Construction of acoustic community and soundscape competences can be elaborated by introducing communication scholar James W. Carey's transfer and the ritual models of communication. Douglasian dirt can help in questioning the concepts of something or someone being "liked" or "disliked" and to culturally contextualise the spatiotemporal character of the sonic phenomena of a given community. The semantic differential can be used in eliciting the connotations and meanings attached to the sounds by a given acoustic community. One way to overcome the obstacle is to apply different fieldwork methods developed among scholars of acoustic communication and soundscape studies. These methods include Sound Preference Test and Recorded Listening Walk.
