The Rhetorical Cultivation of Listening

Abstract

This paper discusses how perceptual habits can be, in contemporary culture, cultivated in connection with social, cultural and technical environments, specifically in the musical listening field. It investigates the strategies employed to persuade listening to something in a certain way, thus expressing concern with the rhetorical dimension in the field of music perception. The paper demonstrates the necessity of understanding the mechanisms by which listening is formatted in relation to musical genres, mediatization strategies and sensible patterns. Finally, it takes the strategies employed in the production process of two albums of Rock as examples of this rhetorical dimension: the album The Joshua Tree (1987), from the Irish band U2, and Nevermind (1991), from the American band Nirvana.