Author(s)

Jingxuan Liu ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Hunan Institute of Engineering, Xiangtan, 411100, Hunan, China

Corresponding Author

Jingxuan Liu

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of sound as a narrative mechanism in Sally Rooney's novel Conversations with Friends. Drawing on Michel Chion's concept of the "added value" of sound and R. Murray Schafer's soundscape theory, the study argues that the novel constructs what it terms "acoustic intimacy": a sonic regime in which sound operates not as atmospheric background but as an active participant in the construction of interpersonal relationships. The analysis focuses on three acoustic phenomena: the spoken-word performances through which the characters' voices encode their relationships, the strategic silences, technological, institutional, and interpersonal, that structure the novel's emotional life, and the interplay of music and ambient sound that shapes its emotional geography. A brief comparison with the 2022 BBC/Hulu television adaptation illustrates how the novel's understated soundscape is amplified and transformed through cinematic sound design. The article demonstrates that close attention to the auditory dimension of contemporary fiction reveals narrative structures and emotional dynamics that verbal analysis alone might not access.

KEYWORDS

Acoustic intimacy; Auditory narrative; Conversations with Friends; Sally Rooney; Sound studies; Television adaptation

CITE THIS PAPER

Jingxuan Liu. Sound as Narrative: The Construction of Acoustic Intimacy in Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends. Media and Communication Research (2026). Vol. 7, No. 2, 60-68. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/mediacr.2026.070207.

REFERENCES

[1] Rooney, S. (2017). Conversations with friends. Hogarth Press.
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[3] Waterman, S. (2023). Sally Rooney's sapiosexuals. Contemporary Literature, 63(2), 230–268.
[4] Carregal-Romero, J. (2023). Unspeakable injuries and neoliberal subjectivities in Sally Rooney's Conversations with Friends and Normal People. In M. T. Caneda-Cabrera & J. Carregal-Romero (Eds.), Narratives of the unspoken in contemporary Irish fiction: Silences that speak (pp. 213–233). Palgrave Macmillan.
[5] Sterne, J. (2003). The audible past: Cultural origins of sound reproduction. Duke University Press.
[6] Chion, M. (1994). Audio-vision: Sound on screen (C. Gorbman, Trans.). Columbia University Press.
[7] Schafer, R. M. (1994). The soundscape: Our sonic environment and the tuning of the world. Destiny Books.
[8] Erlmann, V. (Ed.). (2004). Hearing cultures: Essays on sound, listening and modernity. Berg.
[9] Thompson, E. (2002). The soundscape of modernity: Architectural acoustics and the culture of listening in America, 1900–1933. MIT Press.
[10] Rooney, S. (Executive Producer). (2022). Conversations with Friends [Television series]. Element Pictures; BBC Three; Hulu.
[11] Nancy, J. L. (2007). Listening (C. Mandell, Trans.). Fordham University Press.
[12] Wang, S. (2022, May 20). "Conversations with Friends" soundtrack: 9 key songs from the Hulu show. NYLON.
[13] LaBelle, B. (2010). Acoustic territories: Sound culture and everyday life. Continuum.
[14] Thornton, S. (1996). Club cultures: Music, media and subcultural capital. Wesleyan University Press.
[15] Cusk, R. (2014). Outline. Faber & Faber.

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