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Michelle O’Reilly
‘Active noising’: The use of noises in talk, the case of onomatopoeia, abstract sounds, and the functions they serve in therapy
In this paper I examine an important issue for discursive research. I consider the concept of active noising to provide insight and understanding into the function it serves in interaction. Active noising is defined as deliberate, active sounds made by participants to represent something specific. This incorporates onomatopoeic terms and other extraneous noises. It is prevalent for participants to employ noises throughout my corpus of family therapy data. Noises work differently for adults and children. Children use noises as a way of orienting to conversational topic and as a way of attempting to engage in the main interaction. Active noising serves the specific function for adults in upgrading a claim by representing to the talk recipient the sounds as they were heard at the time, assisting in the authentication of the point being made.
Text - Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 0165-4888
Volume: 25, 10/2005
Pages: 745 - 762