Listening at different scales: Sociolinguistic perception and the listening subject

Abstract This commentary argues that sociophonetic perception studies and linguistic anthropological analyses of the listening subject examine the same underlying process—ideologically structured listening—though at different observational scales. Drawing on Inoue's foundational work and subsequent research on enregisterment, mediatization, and indexical inversion, I show how experimental and ethnographic approaches each illuminate complementary dimensions of listening as both cognitive and sociohistorical. I advocate for a multiscalar model of listening that brings these traditions into closer dialogue, emphasizing how collaboration across methods can reveal the ideological conditions under which voices become audible, meaningful, and contested.