7. A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Listening

This chapter introduces a multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis well-model tuned to the analysis of sound and music in the theatre in relation to other impulses like gestures, images, texts and spaces. This methodology facilitates discussion of the connections between direct auditory perceptions and other sense perceptions in narrativising music and sound. It combines analysis of listening modalities, as introduced by R. Murray Schafer and Barry Truax, with theories of music and sound as communicative affordance in discourse, like Lyndon Way and Simon McKerrell’s. One critical aspect of the method is that it can reveal the ideological aspects lurking behind the power of music and sound. For that purpose, the methodology incorporates Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding differentiation which explains how we consent to certain dominant, hegemonic ideas in which both processes of encoding (intentional meanings at the production side) and decoding (possible interpretations) take place in line with national and geopolitical interests, or in other words, the dominant cultural order. The method is well-suited for the discussion of music(al) theatre in all its forms, but it has been also developed for other audiovisual media, like music videos or the use of music in TikTok reels.