Noise and annoyance
While noise is an integral part of most human activities, it was only at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s that our sonic environment began to interest researchers. This interest continued to grow with the noise levels in our societies. A researcher at the social and cultural anthropology laboratory of the University of Liège, Paul-Louis Colon published an article entitled “Listening to noise and making annoyance heard” (1). An ethnographical approach to noise.
Symbolic and contextual dimension to noise
Having established that the correlation between the noise level and the declared annoyance is relatively slight, research has been carried out in order to discover other parameters which come into play such as the symbolic and contextual dimension. “Context plays an important role. Beyond the acoustic dimension, other factors influence annoyance such as judgments of normality applied to sound, the interpersonal relational context (in the case of neighborhood noise), the way of managing the problem and the attitude of institutions to local residents (as in the case of noise around airports)”, attachment to territory and investment in local life (also in relation to the noise of aircraft)”. Added to this approach which is linked to annoyance is the listening approach which also deals with the problems linked to noise but aims especially to explore the positive aspects of the sonic environment.
(1) “Listen to noise and make annoyance heard”, in Communications. Noises in the town (dir. A. Pecqueux), n°90, pp. 95 – 107, 2012.