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This thesis focuses on informal linguistic transactions that operate in relation to, and as part of spectacle in contemporary society. In contrast to presenting such transactions as a subordinated public, exchanging meaningless chatter, these communicative acts are seen to be a formalization of language revealing processes, networks, and territories that have positive possibilities for the public engaged in these communications. Using examples such as the act of communication evident in the recent exponential growth of web 2.0 (on-line social networking), the sound of language represented in the murmur of political demonstrations, and the audibility of voices on the underground network, this thesis builds upon and extends discussions that have asserted the political resistance inherent in rumour, gossip, idle talk, and hearsay. This specific analysis focuses upon both our physical, corporeal, and virtual relations to chatter within the developing systems of new technology that transfer the majority of today’s informal exchanges—investigating the sounds, repetitions, occupation of networks, and gestures of communication rather than the exchange of specific content. Using a methodology that acknowledges the ephemeral, transgressive and fluid nature of its subject, this project uses regular first person narrated sections supporting theoretical discussion, refuses the ‘permanence’ of visual illustration, and is directly informed by concerns within my art practice. Responding to the ideas inherent to my art practice—concerning the form and presentation of information presented (by the media and political authorities) to the public from which a political cognition is constructed, both text and practice elements of this project focus on an abstract, formal reading of contemporary communication. These abstract experiences of communication and collective action are acknowledged as an integral reading of contemporary politics, and that this sphere should be activated, extended and expanded upon in order to discover the positive possibilities inherent within it.

This thesis aims to describe the auditory and acoustic characteristics of the rhotics in Malayalam. There is disagreement in the limited literature that exists on the language regarding the manner of articulation of the rhotics. Some refer to them as one tap and one trill (Kumari, 1972) while others describe both as trills differing slightly in place of articulation (Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996; Srikumar and Reddy, 1988). The two rhotics are lexically contrastive, e.g. /kaɾi/ soot -/kari/ curry. One of the objectives of the present study is to describe the phonetic characteristics of the two rhotics and the contrast maintenance strategies used by speakers to distinguish between them. Apart from the two uncontested rhotics, there is a fifth liquid, an allegedly similar sound in Tamil and Malayalam that has previously been referred to as being a rhotic by some (Asher and Kumari, 1997; Krishnamurti, 2003, 152) and a lateral by others (Kumari, 1972). Recent studies on Tamil liquids (McDonough and Johnson, 1997; Narayanan et al. 1999) have described the fifth liquid as being a retroflex central approximant, i.e. another rhotic. The second objective of this study is to explore the possibility of the fifth liquid being a third rhotic in Malayalam. Eight male speakers were recorded reading out words, containing at least one of the five liquids in all permissible word-positions, in a carrier phrase. Results of the auditory and acoustic analyses showed that the two rhotics differed mainly in their tongue configurations (laminal and advanced vs. apical and retracted), resonance characteristics (clear vs. dark) and surrounding vowel quality (advanced and closer vs. retracted and open). F2 was found to be the most robust distinguishing acoustic cue. Manner of articulation varied for the apical rhotic from trill to tap to approximant across speakers and depending on word-position while the laminal rhotic was always realised as a tap. Duration was not found to be a robust cue in distinguishing between the two rhotics. The fifth liquid appears to be a clear post-alveolar approximant phonetically while functioning as a retroflex approximant from a phonological point of view. The lack of traditional phonetic cues separating the tap and trill segments in Malayalam highlights the importance of looking at non-segmental long-domain effects for the realisation of their clear (tap) and dark (trill) resonance, which was found to be more important than the actual manner of articulation and temporal cues. This, together with the discrepancy in the phonetic and phonological behaviour of the fifth liquid, suggests that phonetics and phonology share a „partly absolute-partly relative relationship‟ and supports the notion of an Extrinsic Phonetic Interpretation (EPI), which seems to better account for the paradox surrounding the phonologically unified yet phonetically asymmetric class of rhotics.