Language & Communication | 2019
Regimes of hearing: Norwegian qualia of quiet and noise as heard through a migrant classroom
Abstract
Abstract Through an analysis of the way the qualia of noise and quiet are invoked and either given value or stigmatized in a school in Oslo, Norway, this paper traces the ways that people s bodies, their voices, and their material environments are constructed as being either similar or opposed to the ‘us’ of middle-class, majority Norwegians. I build on Inoue (2003) s argument that modes of hearing are the effect of a particular regime of social power. This attention to qualia allows us to develop clearer insight into the creation of one implicit form of exclusion within the city.