Listening to Voices and the Sociological Possibilities of Orality

This paper examines, from the perspective of "auditory sociology," the oral expression of personal experiences and the act of listening to such voices. In consideration of the situation brought about by the development of voice recording/replaying technology, I re-listened to the voice of a Japanese-Canadian Issei recorded during a life story interview that I conducted about 20 years ago. While confirming how the interviewer develops a relation with the interviewee through listening, others' voices in the presence of her voice—as expressed in indirect speech—are recognized and concretely addressed. The relationship between the self and others and the meaning of multi-voices in oral narratives are pointed out through the state of "appropriation" of voices. Additionally, as I faced a situation wherein the interviewee had lost her voice due to some illness, I discuss the characteristics of the voice not only as a means of transmission but also as communality—"auto-affection" and "self-recursiveness." Re-listening to the interview as voices makes me realize that we discuss the "écriture of voice," which brings together auditory sense and visual characters. I conclude that the study based on orality has the sociological possibility of aiming for an understanding of human life within the reciprocality of parole and écriture, while referring to personal history and self-reflectivity found in voices and considering a hearing orientation of being unifying, consonant, and aggregative.