Establishing normality

Listeners have default expectations in known places, and base expectations of new places on similar ones they've been to in the past: expectations were dependent upon people's prior experiences of specic areas visited, past experiences of similar places, or activities undertaken in those areas (Henshaw and Bruce, 2012). Similar spaces (all pubs or all libraries, for instance) dene a context within which the range of expectation of sound environments are situated. Within this context, an environment may be judged by any number of adjectives: quiet, loud, noisy, comfortable, unpleasant, echoy, etc. However, this is relative to other environments in the same conceptual group.

To use `quiet' as an example, some soundscapes are simply judged noticeably quiet in comparison to other sound contexts in the same category. As mentioned (Subsection 5.2.3 on page 155), research participants who used pubs and bars to socialise in invariably preferred quieter ones. Daniel, for instance, preferred Wetherspoons pubs when given a choice, due to their company policy of having no music, aiding better conversation.

Daniel: Obviously it depends on what you're going out for, going with my friends to talk politics we usually like a place where we can have a proper discussion, rather than get drowned out by a load of noise.

Indeed, as one Telegraph reporter summarises in an otherwise fairly negative piece: But we left [the Wetherspoons] feeling strangely content. Everyone in there and it was packed seemed blissfully happy. There's no music in Weth- erspoon's pubs, and no televisions blasting breaking news. In fact, you are almost hermetically sealed from the outside world. In that way, it is a parallel universe, where the beer is cheap and you don't have to acknowledge the dreadful state of the streets outside. I'll drink to that. (Gordon, 2010)

Again this environment is far from quiet, but in comparison to other sound contexts in the same category (going to the pub), it is perceived as an actively quiet choice, and the relative loudness level is a reason for being there.

This eect also happens when people move house from an undesirably loud area to a quieter one, or get quieter housemates.

Elizabeth: It's this thing with sharing a house, it's a great house because it's a big three story terrace, I'm on the top oor, and [the landlord] put in this like soundproong underneath the oors and things and I've lived in houses before now where I can hear next door having a massive row when you're trying to sleep or you're trying to work and stu. And the other house that I lived in before I moved in to this one, I could hear him on, like talking to his girlfriend on the internet and stu, and you know yourself, as a PhD student, generally you know, you're tired and you're stressed out and you come home and you just want to chill. Or you want to sleep, and you've got work to do, and I do prefer to either, if I can put my headphones in and I'm working then that's not a problem, but if I'm trying to sleep I need quiet, cos I do have problems sleeping. Um, and I'm very grumpy, and everyone knows when I have problems sleeping cos I'm not a very happy bunny (laughs)!

Even though this home environment is judged mostly on the absence of a fairly com- prehensive list of negatives, Elizabeth speaks positively about this change of pace, and appreciates the relative quiet even though there are other issues in this place. Kate had a similar experience:

Kate: It wasn't horrible to start o with, it just became horrible 'cause loads of drug dealers moved in and err, so there was all police raids and shouting and ghts and junkies and errr teenagers and ghts, and it was really noisy, constantly. So the rst thing that my children as well thought when we moved into this house was [that] we really appreciated the quiet.

Pub, club, home or work then, this category is summarised by a comparison to other environments in the same category. A listener preference is then selected, and becomes the desirable context. This becomes the background level of soundscape expectation against which other experiences are judged.

Migrant Experiences

International students' reactions to the soundscapes of Manchester and Salford were fairly dierent to natives', and as auditory tourists, migrants generally noticed a lot more than natives of the urban North West, and UK natives in general. Migrant participants had a strong sense of contrast to their native country, with the soundscape becoming more obvious due to its dierence from home. This was both in a general sense of the background rhythms and textures of day-to-day sound environments being both dierent, and with specic, unusual soundmarks.

The tourist's experience then is one of vastly lowered expectation, with people actively noticing dierences and generally being much more aware of their surroundings. In total there were ve international students, Nadia from Malaysia, Pablo from Brazil, Roger from Nigeria and Tahir from Jordan. All were living here solely for the purpose of their postgraduate qualications.

Nadia thinks it's very important to experience everything you can in life, and has been the length and breadth of the UK during her visit, much to the disdain of her children. She is very keen on getting the most out of the tourist experience.

Nadia: I will drive the kids like it or not, they say oh no not another castle, oh no not another mansion. I said no we're going to see this, whether you like it or not, experience this until we nish and we go home

As a result, she had a heightened awareness of everything around her. Her home context is very dierent. Malay culture is very musical, with both pop and traditional music around a lot, and there is generally an oral tradition perhaps stemming from a high Muslim population who are used to singing Quranic verses.

Nadia: Malay music is an everyday part of our life. Um, of course it's traditional kind of thing and I do listen to the pop side of the Malay. [. . . ] The language our national language which is Bahasa Melayu. Behasa means language, Melayu means to the people, it's very much it's quite an easy language. I mean I've been told I've got a lot of foreign friends who pick

it up within three months. Because it does not have past, past tense and you know it's melodious. For example, the word thank you, is terima kasih. Terima means I accept and Kasih is love, so if you do something and say I accept your love. You do it out of love. Very melodious, very poetic kind of language. So because of that it translates in to the music too.

The other keynote of Malay living is that of running water, and water in general. Nadia: Malaysia is a peninsula. Everything is water, so you want to go to the beaches. Even though I stay in Kuala Lumpur which is two hours away from the beach, water parks are around, we are you know, it's a tropical country. In my home, in my actual home in in, now I have a little pond.

In Malaysia it's a fusion between Malay, Chinese and Indian so that's why we say if you want to visit Asia, it's truly Asia2_{, because we have all the}

dierent components of [Asia]. And water is a feature in the in the society. [. . . ] Water owing shows money, kind of thing. Like the feng shui kind of thing is the Chinese element, which the Malays being to. Muslims do not believe, but we do it anyway because everybody is doing it. You have little ponds around, so water reminds me of home.

Needless to say, Nadia really likes showering as a reminder of home, as well as her house water feature. Salford and Manchester by contrast, she doesn't really like, especially when there are periods of poor weather this interview happened in July so she was positive at this point about the weather. Other factors of the soundscape in Manchester were strongly disliked too barking dogs for example, really set her on edge as for Muslims, dog lick is unclean and requires ritual washing a big inconvenience. As a result, people don't keep domestic dogs in Malaysia, so the large amount of dogs in Salford she found really unpleasant, and would cross the street to avoid potential issues. In contrast, I doubt people born in the UK would notice dogs barking nearly as often, and certainly not with the same kind of high arousal, given how commonly people keep them as domestic pets. Another key dierence between countries is the rhythm of life, and the schedule of the working week. Pablo and Roger both are used to signicantly dierent working weeks,

2_{It's worth noting the Malaysia Tourist Board's ocial slogan is Truly Asia, so this may simply be}

with Pablo starting and nishing work much later but with a long, two hour lunchbreak in Brazil, and Roger being used to very long days at the bank. Both have adjusted to the British 9-5 pace of life, but state a preference for their home work rhythm. Nevertheless, compared to the UK residents they generally seem to have much more routine in their lives, with highly regimented times for work and play, and preferring to work in the oce or library rather than at home, except for jobs which require very high concentration. This highlights a hidden rhythm then: the subtle expectation of the ebb and ow of daily life.

While there is no direct soundscape correlation here with daily rhythms, it's worth noting that a Lefebvrian analysis would go into more depth here, examining the score of people's daily lives and how they dier in dierent social contexts. It would be interesting to compare soundscape responses in migrant's native countries to those in the UK, comparing which aspects go unnoticed however, like a lot of interesting questions, this is a question for another research project. Nevertheless it's important to note here that not only do migrants likely have radically dierent associations with certain noise sources (running water and dogs for example), but the time spent in dierent environments and the pace of life varies radically in dierent places.