We have known for some time that babies possess a keen perceptual sensitivity for the melodic, rhythmic and dynamic aspects of speech and music: aspects that linguists are inclined to categorize under the term ‘prosody’, but which are in fact the building blocks of music. Only much later in a child’s development does he make use of this ‘musical prosody’, for instance in delineating and subsequently recognizing word boundaries. In this essay Henkjan Honing makes a case for ‘illiterate listening’, the human ability to discern, interpret and appreciate musical nuances already from day one, long before a single word has been uttered, let alone conceived. It is the preverbal and preliterate stage that is dominated by musical listening. See also the download version.

Listening to Reading presents two different kinds of writing about poetry—"critical analysis" and "performance"—both of which pay particular attention to sound, shape, and the relation of sound/shape to meaning. It offers a critical and performative presentation of experimental writing, also known as avant garde, postmodern, innovative, and language writing. Less concerned with labels than with asking how this writing works, it invites us to read from earlier works by Mallarme, Stein, and Cage to books published in the eighties and nineties by Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, David Bromige, Clark Coolidge, Beverly Dahlen, Michael Davidson, Larry Eigner, Robert Grenier, Lyn Hejinian, Paul Hoover, Susan Howe, Ron Padgett, Michael Palmer, and Leslie Scalapino—writers whose work is viewed as difficult, and who have as yet been largely ignored by criticism.

This study brings recent scholarly debates on oral cultures and literate societies to bear on the earliest recorded literature in German (800-1300). It considers the criteria for assessing what works were destined for listeners, what examples anticipated readers, and how for both modes of reception could apply to one work, exploring the possible interplay between them. The opening chapters review previous scholarship and the introduction of writing into preliterate Germany. The core of the book presents lexical and non-lexical evidence for the different modes of reception, taken from the whole spectrum of genres, from dance songs to liturgy, from drama and heroic literature to the court narrative and lyric poetry. The social contexts of reception and the physical process of reading books are also considered. Two concluding chapters explore the literary and historical implications of the slow interpenetration of orality and literacy. There is a comprehensive bibliographical index of primary sources.

The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages is the most exhaustive treatment of the Romance languages available today. Leading international scholars adopt a variety of theoretical frameworks and approaches to offer a detailed structural examination of all the individual Romance varieties and Romance-speaking areas, including standard, non-standard, dialectal, and regional varieties of the Old and New Worlds. The book also offers a comprehensive comparative account of major topics, issues, and case studies across different areas of the grammar of the Romance languages. The volume is organized into 10 thematic parts: Parts 1 and 2 deal with the making of the Romance languages and their typology and classification, respectively; Part 3 is devoted to individual structural overviews of Romance languages, dialects, and linguistic areas, while Part 4 provides comparative overviews of Romance phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics, and sociolinguistics. Chapters in Parts 5-9 examine issues in Romance phonology, morphology, syntax, syntax and semantics, and pragmatics and discourse, respectively, while the final part contains case studies of topics in the nominal group, verbal group, and the clause. The book will be an essential resource for both Romance specialists and everyone with an interest in Indo-European and comparative linguistics.

The basic function of mass communication media is to pro-vide information, education or instruction and entertainment to the people. The media also motivate people directly and indire-ctly. To discharge these functions in a meaningful and purposeful manner in any country or in any community, the mans media agencies have to be clear about the broad communication objec-tives which may guide their operations in their day to day work.

Why do people attach importance to the wordless language we call music? Musical Cognition suggests that music is a game. In music, our cognitive functions such as perception, memory, attention, and expectation are challenged; yet, as listeners, we often do not realize that the listener plays an active role in reaching the awareness that makes music so exhilarating, soothing, and inspiring. In reality, the author contends, listening does not happen in the outer world of audible sound, but in the inner world of our minds and brains.Recent research in the areas of psychology and neuro-cognition allows Henkjan Honing to be explicit in a way that many of his predecessors could not. His lucid, evocative writing style guides the reader through what is known about listening to music while avoiding jargon and technical diagrams. With clear examples, the book concentrates on underappreciated musical skills—sense of rhythm and relative pitch—skills that make people musical creatures. Research on how living creatures respond to music supports the conviction that all humans have a unique, instinctive attraction to music. Everyone is musical.Musical Cognition includes a selection of intriguing examples from recent literature exploring the role that an implicit or explicit knowledge of music plays when one listens to it. The scope of the topics discussed ranges from the ability of newborns to perceive a beat, to the unexpected musical expertise of ordinary listeners. The evidence shows that music is second nature to most human beings—biologically and socially. This paperback edition contains a new afterword that details cutting-edge research on musicality and language.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer is the only how-to manual that takes you step-by-step through the design, implementation and analysis of a customer satisfaction measurement program. In it you will learn: How to develop a customer satisfaction measurement program that provides the information you need to increase customer retention and profits. How to select the best survey method. Includes the pros, cons, and costs of telephone, mail, and in-person interviews, and computer-assisted surveys. How to select the right sample size for your survey, and avoid biases for truly significant results. How to increase your survey response rates: survey methods, timing, incentives and more. How to survey large and small customer bases for accurate results. How to write survey questions that will get you meaningful results. Including examples of survey scales and formats that you can adapt to your own work. How to design a survey questionnaire that is easy to read and use. Including guidelines on questionnaire length, placement of specific types of questions, and writing an effective cover letter or script. How to implement your survey. Including data gathering, coding and data entry techniques. How to analyze your survey results and accurately compare data gathered over time. How to produce actionable reports based on your findings. Listening to the Voice of the Customer will show you how to develop a customer satisfaction measurement program that provides actionable information to help your organization become truly customer-focused. Throughout the book you will find very specific tips and advice based on the authors work developing and implementing customer satisfaction measurement programs. So whether you're new to customer satisfaction measurement or have a program in place, you'll find Listening to the Voice of the Customer an invaluable resource.

The first systematic, comprehensive and critical English-language study of radio in China, this book documents a historical understanding of Chinese radio from the early twentieth century to the present. Covering both public matters and private lives, Radio and Social Transformation in China analyses a range of themes from healthcare, migration and education, to intimacy, family and friendship. Through a concentrated and thorough scrutiny of a variety of new genres and radio practices in post-Mao China, it also investigates the interaction between radio and social change, particularly in the era of economic reform. Building on the core theoretical concept of ‘compressed modernity’, each of the radio genres explored is shown to embody China’s efforts to achieve modernity, while simultaneously exemplifying radio’s capacity to manage the challenges that have arisen from the country’s distinctive and perhaps unique process of modernization. Written in an engaging style, this book makes an important contribution to radio history internationally. As such, it will be of great interest to students and scholars of broadcast media, radio and Communication Studies, as well as Chinese culture and society.

Listening to Others is the first English-language volume dedicated solely to the vast corpus of the preeminent Brazilian director, Eduardo Coutinho (1933–2014). From his early work in the 1960s to his last, posthumous film in 2015, Coutinho transformed documentary filmmaking in Brazil and beyond. Described as an informal linguist and savage anthropologist, Coutinho filmed encounters with people different from himself that foregrounded their voices and his role as an attentive listener, creating a "cinema of listening." This collection brings together leading scholars of film, literature, visual culture, Brazilian studies, and Latin American studies, from the United States and Latin America, to examine both Coutinho's masterpieces and less studied films. Using a range of approaches, the contributors invite new ways of understanding the documentarian's trajectory and importance as his work transformed in response to dictatorship, democratization, and other political, social, and technological changes over the course of five decades. The volume also features original translations of a selection of Coutinho's writings and key texts by Brazilian critics to offer a historical perspective on his filmmaking and its reception.