Argument

Throughout the book, Ceraso repeatedly expresses the need for consumers and producers to understand the effect and affect of sonic experiences, and she stresses the need to relook at how sound and sonic exposure are received.  She urges listeners to become more attune “to the connections among sensory modes, environments, and materials” (p. 5).  What it means to be an effective listener has evolved due to the increase in technology and sonic exposure, so now is the time to contemplate effective listening techniques both as a consumer and a producer and to reconsider how sound interacts, influences, is influenced, and is incorporated into rhetoric and composition.  Jonathan Sterne explains that sound studies is “a name for the inter-disciplinary ferment in the human sciences that takes sound as its analytical point of departure or arrival … it redescribes what sound does in the human world, and what humans do in the sonic world” (p. 14) indicating there is a need for a more holistic, embodied approach to sonic education.  Ceraso acknowledges that more people are paying attention to the impact of sound and explains “what is new and significant about digital technologies is their pervasiveness in home, work, and public environments” (p. 4), but she asserts that not much progress has been made to teach students about how to engage effectively or critically in sonic interactions.  She explains there is currently more of an emphasis on strategies for teaching students how to create sonic projects, than with teaching them the possibilities of viewing sonic projects as being capable of producing effects on themselves or their audience.  To bridge this gap, she offers a pedagogical approach to sound and listening geared toward rhetoric and composition scholars so as to better equip students with the knowledge to prepare them for interacting in the world.  Ceraso hopes to transform pedagogical approaches by offering innovative courses in rhetoric and composition that include an emphasis on multimodal listening pedagogy, so she develops “a pedagogical framework that is based on listening and composing techniques from an eclectic mix of contemporary sound practitioners” (p. 3).