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This chapter focusses on current debates on ‘locating metal’ and on the demand for more theoretical and methodological rigor in metal studies. As an example of the usage of a non-English language in metal, the author examines the empirical case of the usage of Austrian German and Austrian dialects in metal music since around 1990. Herein, the author will be using the disciplinary methodologies of history and analyse the two Austrian bands Alkbottle and Varulv. According to the theory of ‘sonic knowledge’, the case study is interpreted as an example of ‘locating metal’ that occurred in the Austrian metal scene. The chapter shows that the seemingly contradictory coexistence of both deconstructive irony and essentialist nationalism is characteristic of the usage of Austrian German in metal. To conclude, the author proposes that this paradox is a result of the broad cultural history of Austrian nation building after 1945. The paradox of the usage of Austrian dialects in metal is the metal scene's attempt at coping with the frictions of Austria's twentieth century history.

This study explores student sensemaking based on the creation and interpretation of sound on a public school bus, operating as a result of a desegregation settlement. To understand these multimodal literacy practices, the authors examined students’ journeys, sonically as passengers in mobile and adult-constructed space.

As a qualitative study, the authors used ethnographic methods for data collection. Additionally, the authors used a design-based research approach to work alongside students to capture and interpret sound levels on the bus.

Findings from this study illustrate how students used sounds as a means to create community, engage in agentic choices and make meaning of their surroundings. Moreover, students used sound as a way around the pervasive drone of the bus itself.

Research implications from this study speak to the need for research approaches that extend beyond visual observation. Sonic interpretation can offer researchers greater understanding into student learning as they spend time in interstitial spaces.

This manuscript illustrates possibilities that emerge if educators attune to the sounds that shape a learner’s day and the ways in which attention to sonic design can create more equitable spaces that are conducive to students’ learning and literacy needs.

This study demonstrates the use of sound as a means of sensemaking, calling attention to new ways of understanding student experiences in adult-governed spaces.

The purpose of this study is to determine how sonic logo’s acoustic features (intensity, pitch and pace) based on melodic tunes with no voice orient the response of consumers, attract attention, elicit levels of pleasantness and calmness and transmit brand personality traits.

A within-subject experimental factorial design is applied to measure emotional arousal (indexed as electrodermal activity) and enhancement on perceptual processing (indexed as heart rate), as well as self-reported factors, namely, calmness/excitement, pleasantness and brand personality scales.

Results show a significant increase on electrodermal activity associated with fast-paced sonic logos and a decrease in heart rate in slow-paced long sonic logos. Also, fade-up, pitch-ascending fast sonic logos are defined as more exciting and descending-pitch sonic logos as more pleasant.

The use of sonic logos with no voice does limit its implications. Besides, the use of three variables simultaneously with 18 versions of sonic logos in a laboratory setting may have driven participants to fatigue; hence, findings should be cautiously applied.

First, sonic logos are best processed in a fade-up form. Second, fast pace is recommended to orient response, whereas slow pace is recommended to transmit calmness. Practitioners may opt for fast-paced sonic logos if the design is new or played in a noisy environment and opt for slow-paced sonic logos in already highly recognized sound designs.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to combine psychophysiological measures and self-reported scales in a laboratory experiment on how sonic logo’s acoustic features orient response, transmit emotions and personality traits.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the sonic vibrations, infectious rhythms and alternative frequencies that are often unheard and overlooked within mainstream educational spaces, that is, perceptually coded out of legibility by those who read/see/hear the world through “whiteness.”

“Plugging into” (Jackson and Mazzei, 2012) posthuman theories of affect (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Henriques, 2010) and assemblage (Weheliye, 2014), the author argues that “literate bodies,” along with all forms of matter, continually vibrate, move, swell and rebel (Deleuze, 1990), creating momentum that is often difficult not to get tangled up in.

This paper maps out how a specific sociohistorical concept of sound works to affectively orient bodies and impact student becomings, namely, by producing students as un/successful readers and in/human subjects. At the same time, the author attends to the subtle ways by which first graders rebelliously move (d) with alternative sonic frequencies to resist/disrupt mandated literacy curricula and white, patriarchal ways of knowing, being and doing.

This paper highlights the political nature of sound and how, within mainstream educational spaces, certain sonic frequencies become coded out of white supremacist models for knowledge transmission, which re/produce racialized (gendered, classist, etc.) habits and practices of listening/hearing. Literacy educators are invited to “(re)hear” the social in more just ways (James, 2020) by sensing the affects and effects of more-than-human “sonic bodies” (Henriques, 2011), which redirect us to alternative rhythms, rationalities, habits and practices that challenge normative conceptions of what counts as literacy and who counts as successfully literate.