ABSTRACT
This chapter orients and prepares readers by providing definitions of sound and sound-related terminology. For example, Michel Chion classified listening into three categories or modes. Causal listening determines sources of sounds, while reduced listening characterizes sounds, and semantic listening interprets sound's messages. Medico-sonic knowledge simultaneously requires all three modes of listening for what R. Murray Schafer named sonological competence—the unification of “impression with cognition [making] it possible to formulate and express sonic perceptions.” For medico-sonic semantic listening, rhetoric and rhetorical devices feature prominently. This chapter also explains why a material-feminist approach to investigate sound is important—feminism is about drawing attention to what counts, what is worthy of noting or amplifying—and describes examples of sound's somatic consequences today and yesterday. For the former, TikTok creator @nurse_sushi provides an example of the rhetorical power of healthcare technologies integrated with sound during the pandemic context; and for the latter, the role of clappers for people around leprosy. Rhetoric is shown to help surmount ocular centrism and a visual sensory hegemony before describing pan-historiography and providing a chapter overview.
