Lexicon from the "Mics in the ears" experimental procedure Lexique issu du dispositif expérimental « Des micros dans les oreilles »

« Mics in the Ears » binaural experiment in Cairo (Egypt): Vincent Battesti & Nicolas Puig, social anthropologists, asked inhabitants of Cairo megapolis in Egypt to record the surrounding urban sounds during one of their daily journeys (without the researcher), equipped with binaural microphones and GPS device. Participants have recorded in different Cairo neighbourhoods, and are themselves from different generations, social and economic backgrounds, and different genders.

We obtained accounts of the soundwalks in which participants describe and comment on the sounds heard while relistening to their recorded walk. This material comprises many pages of transcriptions in Arabic from which we have extracted elements related to the verbalization of their sound experience. We identified 600 entries divided into five classes: “nouns,” “sound sources,” “qualificatives/descriptives,” “actions/ verbs,” and “localizations of the sound event.” Together they form the lexicon of what can be called the “natural language of sounds” in Cairo. See https://vbat.org/article831