Linguistics in a Minor Key—Of Atmospheres, Voice(s), and Ethics

Abstract In this article, I reflect on the complexities of signification and suggest that the study of music allows us to push forward the radical project of dis-inventing language in applied linguistics (Makoni and Pennycook 2007). In thinking about language, music, and meaning, I focus on a song that has travelled around the globe and that has sounded the Black radical tradition: Aretha Franklin’s song Respect (1967). I explore the multiple significations of this song: the revolutionary atmosphere in which the song emerged and which it co-created, the voices that shape it, and the ethics that its words articulate. Throughout the text, I emphasize the importance of listening as a scholarly stance. Theoretically, the article draws on the ideas of minor theory (Deleuze and Guattari 1983) and disciplinary disobedience (Gordon 2014), two perspectives that are helpful when thinking about southern theory and decolonial scholarship. The aim is to see worlds in the grain of the voice (Barthes 1977), in the grain of a song, and to articulate expressive struggles.