Marked sound: rhetorical listening and the affordances of digital annotation

Abstract This article examines how digital annotation functions as an affordance for rhetorical listening in audiovisual archives. Drawing on Caroline Levine’s theory of affordances and Krista Ratcliffe’s concept of rhetorical listening, we argue that annotations reconfigure listening as an inventive and relational process that offers new directions for sonic engagement. Focusing on three case studies—Anne Sexton, Roy Kiyooka, and Muriel Rukeyser—we illustrate how marked sound can foster cross-cultural rhetorical exchange and create new ways to listen in digital environments. In these case studies, rhetorical listening is accomplished through the use of AVAnnotate, a minimal computing application that enables users to create, publish, and circulate time-stamped annotations and develop new possibilities for interpretive invention across audio and video recordings.