Taking Aim at Good Targets: Inter-rater Agreement of Listening Competency

In a post hoc study conducted on closed files at the Centre of Audio-Psycho-Phonology, the psychometric distributionof Listening Threshold decibel scores was found to be positively skewed, and in some cases bi-modal, necessitating the use of non-parametric statistics for hypothesis testing. The author notes inappropriate statistical usage in previously published studies investigating the Listening Threshold variable. Once correct statistics are applied, and appropriate controls are introduced for expected ceiling and interaction effects, Listening Threshold decibel scores were found to decrease significantly following treatment using the Tomatis remedial listening program.     

Listening Styles: Sex Differences in Perceptions of Self and others

Historically, more time has been spent on teaching speaking than listening, even though listening is the communication activity in which we spend most of our time. Difficulties in teaching include the lack of a single definition or model of listening. Additionally, since listening is both cognitive and behavioral, effectiveness is often evaluated by what students know as opposed to what students do. This article provides a comprehensive look at what is known about teaching listening in both the college and corporate classrooms. Finally, it proposes the educational concept of Teacher Research to develop further theories on how to teach listening more effectively.     

听说自主学习系统使用管理方式的探究

通过问卷调查的方式,针对听说自主学习系统管理和使用方面进行了解研究,发现其中存在的问题,分析这些问题的原因并提出了解决问题的对策,以便提高听说自主学习系统的利用率,达到培养学生自主学习能力和提高学生听说能力的目的.     

Listening to learn: “Inactive” publics of the arts as exemplar

This exploratory study offers a research methodology by which organizations can more effectively listen to their publics. Using a dialogic interface, the methodology allows informants to relate how their intersections with organizations make sense to them on their own terms.     

Studying the Gendering of Organizational Culture Over Time: Concerns,Issues and Strategies

Beginning with the premise that ‘organizational culture’ is a useful heuristic for the study of gender at work, this article focuses on the problem of studying the culture of organizations over time, setting out to demonstrate how the social construction of corporate history has, until now, lent itself to gendered notions of business practices. Arguing that history itself is but one of a series of discourses about the world, the article outlines a feminist strategy for the study of organizational culture over time that includes: (i) feminist historiography as history written from a feminist point of view; (ii) a commitment to the notion of history as discourse rooted in the present; (iii) a view of women’s rights development as a paradoxical process of progress and regress; (iv) a gender focus approach that studies the impact of discrimination on the social construction of masculinity/femininity and sexual preference; and (v) an approach that is sensitive to the contextualization of gender. British Airways is used as a case study to illustrate some of the problems of historic re/construction and feminist historiography.     

Cults,Culture, and Community

No abstract available for this article.     

Socrates,Skinner, and Aristotle: Three Ways of Thinking About Culture in Action1

The cultural turn has been one of the major shifts in sociology over the last two decades. Though nearly everyone now agrees that culture matters, how it matters is not terribly clear. What, exactly, is culture supposed to do? In this essay, I articulate two ideal‐typical—though often implicit—ways most sociologists have thought about culture’s role in action. Although no single sociologist or piece of research fully embodies either ideal type, I believe they are real tendencies in the field that have real consequences for how research is designed, undertaken, and understood. After outlining these approaches, I subject them to an engagement with cognitive science. This is not out a desire for reductionism but, as I will show, because a crucial difference between these perspectives is their implicit model of how human beings perceive, acquire, store, retrieve, and act on the symbolic information that surrounds them every day. This exercise will lead to the conclusion that both perspectives are incomplete and will point toward a synthetic approach that can shed new light on how culture matters for action.     

Developing a Contextual Consciousness: Learning to Address Gender,Societal Power,and Culture in Clinical Practice

Despite the growing number of culturally sensitive training models and considerable literature on the importance of training clinicians in larger contextual issues, research examining how students learn to apply these issues is limited. In this participatory action research project, we systematically studied our own process as marriage and family therapy (MFT) practicum students developing a contextual consciousness. Using grounded theory, we identified a three‐stage process: (a) raised awareness through clinical experimentation and developing a theoretical rationale, (b) reflective questioning involving challenging old perspectives and experiencing positive client–therapist interactions, and (c) an intentional new lens based on personal responsibility and commitment. Creating and maintaining a contextual lens required a safe, empowering group dynamic and accessing other forms of support and accountability after the practicum.     

Comment on Stephen Vaisey's "Socrates, Skinner, and Aristotle: Three Ways of Thinking About Culture in Action"

In this essay, I respond to Vaisey's arguments on culture and cognition, noting our points of agreement and disagreement and posing new ideas for future research.     

A Broader Understanding of the Ethics of Listening: Philosophy,Cultural Studies,Media Studies and the Ethical Listening Subject

This study investigated the effects of Mozart's high-frequency-rich music and structured oral directions on third graders' auding and reading comprehension performance. The design was pre-post, with a control group and two experimental treatment groups. Mozart Symphonies Nos. 35, 38, 40, and 41, and four Frank Schaffer listening skills books were used with one experimental group. The second experimental group received the listening instruction without music. The control group worked assorted word searches. The Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (Forms 1 and 2, Primary C) and the Addison-Wesley Sequential Test of Educational Progress (STEP) III (D) Listening Test (Form X) were used to measure reading comprehension and auding respectively. Instruction was administered by regular classroom teachers to intact classes for 30 minute morning periods, three times per week for eight weeks. Analysis of pretest and posttest scores from 63 students reveal that an organized instructional method using Mozart's music and oral directions significantly increases auding and reading comprehension, with music being the key independent variable.     

Making choices in my life: Listening to the ideas and experiences of young people in the UK who communicate non-verbally

Service user participation and making choices are frequently advocated, however, they are complex concepts and how they are translated and/or experienced in everyday life can vary amongst different groups of service users. Recognising the importance of participation in current international guidance and UK government policy this paper seeks to explore how research can include a frequently marginalised group of disabled young people, in particular young people with learning disabilities and/or who communicate non-verbally. The paper discusses the use of non-traditional research methods, especially symbol based interviews developed in an ongoing English longitudinal study exploring choices and decision-making processes for young people with life-limiting conditions. The paper then presents some research findings and concludes by discussing their implications. In particular, it demonstrates how the use of symbol based interviews can inform policy makers about how these young people can be included in research and that listening to them can inform our understanding of decision-making processes.     

Dots,fruit, speed and pills: the Happy Consciousness of Pac-Man

Spanning 30 years and 40 individual videogames across a range of platforms, Pac-Man is one of the most recognizable of all videogame characters and a pop–culture icon. In spite of its widespread popularity, the game receives little sustained academic engagement or analysis. In an attempt to address this, the paper argues that in its classic iterations Pac-Man generates complex notions of space and time which are indicative of changing cultural, ethical and political considerations in wider society. This is explored through recourse to Borges’ work on labyrinths, Bauman’s discussion of the ethical position of videogames, Poole’s rejoinder and Ritzer’s critique of consumerism, ultimately arguing that the dynamics, themes and leitmotifs evident in Pac-Man are experienced by gamers, consumers and citizens described in Marcuse’s One Dimensional Society, whereby the welfare and warfare state coalesce to generate the Happy Consciousness.     

Barbie Zelizer,Ed., Visual Culture and the Holocaust/Matthew Baigell and Milly Heyd,Eds., Complex Identities: Jewish Consciousness and Modern Art

Mass media and the culture it carries have been identified as a key site of conflict in the so-called culture wars, pitting evangelical Christians against mainstream American society. Paradoxically, Evangelicals historically have appropriated the spectrum of forms of popular culture in America and secular commercial practices for evangelizing vehicles and, at the same time, contributed an evangelical voice to that culture. The author argues that Evangelicals' use of media has moved into a new level of sophistication enabling effective entry into the national discourse, partly through dramatic growth of contemporary Christian music. Given this phenomenon, the author examines issues of identity and social forces driving the subculture; he also explores potential influences or effects on the broader secular culture. Using a range of cultural theory, the author argues that the movement toward religious messages in the form of popular music enables the subculture of evangelical Christians to resist against a dominant secular society by taking possession of a cultural form and redefining it as their own, empowering them to effect an influential voice in the cultural discourse of American society.     

Social services for sexual minority youth: Preferences for what,where, and how services are delivered

As part of an internet-based study to investigate experiences of sexual minority youth in the U.S., 544 youth, ages 14–19, were surveyed about their need for services, where they preferred to receive these services, and their preferred method of service delivery. The survey was anonymous and youth were recruited from LGBTQ-specific listservs and venues as well as through social networking sites as a way of reaching youth often not represented in LGBTQ surveys. Youth highly endorsed many types of services, settings, and modes of delivery. Some subgroup differences emerged. Transgender youth and those uncertain about their gender identity expressed stronger interest than others in services to address stress, family issues, and self-defense, and in receiving support and guidance from LGBTQ adults. Few differences in service preferences along demographic lines such as race/ethnicity emerged; however, African American youth were more likely than others to prefer services offered in a place of worship. Contrary to predictions, geographic and community variables were not related to service type, delivery format, or location preferences.     

Jeopardy,Consciousness, and Multiple Discrimination: Intersecting Inequalities in Contemporary Western Europe

Theories of intersectionality argue that individuals with multiple minority statuses often face mistreatment that stems from multiple, interlocking systems of inequality. King (1988) refers to this phenomenon as “multiple jeopardy,” and argues that those who experience multiple jeopardy often develop a “multiple consciousness”—an awareness of multiple systems of inequality working with and through one another. This study analyzes recent survey data to assess perceived multiple jeopardy and its relationship to multiple consciousness in the context of contemporary Western Europe. Findings provide support for intersectionality, as individuals who hold multiple minority statuses are more likely than others to perceive having personally experienced multiple forms of discrimination, and are more likely to view multiple discrimination (discrimination based on multiple social statuses) as a widespread social phenomenon. Controlling for other factors, personal experiences with multiple forms of discrimination (“multiple jeopardy”) are associated with greater multiple consciousness. Personal experiences with discrimination based on a single dimension of inequality (“single jeopardy”) also facilitate multiple consciousness, however, though not to the same degree. The conclusion highlights the importance of intersectionality for future research and policy concerning discrimination.     

Black Edens,country Eves: Listening,performance, and black queer longing in country music

ABSTRACT

This article explores Black queer country music listening, performance, and fandom as a source of pleasure, nostalgia, and longing for Black listeners. Country music can be a space for alliance and community, as well as a way of accessing sometimes repressed cultural and personal histories of violence: lynching and other forms of racial terror, gender surveillance and disciplining, and continued racial and economic segregation. For many Black country music listeners and performers, the experience of being a closeted fan also fosters an experience of ideological hailing, as well as queer world-making. Royster suggests that through Black queer country music fandom and performance, fans construct risky and soulful identities. The article uses Tina Turner's solo album, Tina Turns the Country On! (1974) as an example of country music's power as a tool for resistance to racial, sexual, and class disciplining.     

Culture Within Sites,Culture as Resources,and Culture as Wider Contexts: A Typology of How Culture Works in Social Movement Theory

Sociologists of social movements agree that culture matters for studying collective action, and have proposed a variety of theoretical concepts to understand culture and mobilization, including framing, free spaces, and collective identity. Despite this, what we mean when we say “culture matters” remains unclear. In this paper, I draw on 30 years of social movement theory and research to construct a typology of three ways that culture is seen as shaping social movement activity: (i) culture renders particular sites fruitful for social movements to mobilize out of; (ii) culture serves as a resource that assists in movement action; and (iii) culture provides wider contexts that shape movement activity. This typology represents the analytic building blocks of theories about culture and social movements, and is presented towards the end of clarifying and sharpening our theoretical concepts. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research that draw on, refine, and extend these three building blocks.