Introducing Listening to the SONG of Life
1.1 A Communication Perspective of Listening
To define listening in the field of Communication, I review the following resources. I review journal articles published in the International Journal of Listening [1] from its inception in 1987 through 2023, and articles from searches conducted in Communication and Mass Media Complete and Google Scholar.[2] Of the resources found, three publications represent major attempts to conceptualize listening in the field of Communication. [3] First, Glenn’s review of fifty definitions of listening highlights the most important listening themes as attention, perception, interpretive, verbal and nonverbal cues, memory, and a potential response. Second, Witkin and Trochim describe a conceptual map of listening using cluster names such as sensory impressions, context, active testing, empathy, and composite powers. And third, Worthington and Bodie suggest that a single all-encompassing definition of listening is undesirable. Instead, they contend that listening should be defined by research grounded in a particular theory. Theoretical perspectives in listening emphasize different constructs, for example, cognitive, affective, behavioral, and relational. Janusik labels these four listening constructs the Listening Quad.[4]
I also uncovered two often-quoted definitions for listening from international sources. The International Listening Association’s task force in 1994 created the following definition of listening:
Listening is the active process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages. It involves the ability to retain information, as well as to react empathically and/or appreciatively to spoken and/or nonverbal messages.[5]
And the Global Listening Centre defines listening as:
. . . a multimodal process that underlies effective interpersonal and intercultural relations. Listening is part attitude . . . part skill . . . and part physical, driven by a host of physiological, sensory-motor, cognitive, and affective functions . . . these elements shape the perceptual lenses through which humans interpret and strive to understand themselves, colored by each individual’s cultural background.[6]
In addition to the listening concepts from the review of the literature, these later two definitions add further ideas to the conceptualization of listening as a multimodal process, an attitude, a skill, and a set of individual and cultural perceptual lenses.
- The International Journal of Listening is the main academic journal on listening in the field of Communication. The journal is sponsored by the International Listening Association. ↵
- Communication and Mass Media Complete is the most comprehensive database of academic journals in the field of Communication. According to the EBSCO website, "Communication & Mass Media Complete includes 917 active indexed and abstracted journals. 877 of them are peer-reviewed. https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/communication-mass-media-complete. Google Scholar is another well regarded academic index to journal articles, books, and professional papers including Communication and other academic disciplines related to listening in the Humanities and Social Sciences. For both of these databases, I conducted a title search with the keywords "listening" AND variations of the term "definition." ↵
- Ethel C. Glenn, "A Content Analysis of Fifty Definitions of Listening," International Journal of Listening, 3, no. 1 (1989): 21-31; Belle Ruth Witkin and William W. K. Trochim, "Toward a Synthesis of Listening Constructs: A Concept Map Analysis," International Journal of Listening, 11, no. 1 (1997): 69-87; and Debora Worthington and Graham D. Bodie, "Defining Listening: A Historical, Theoretical, and Pragmatic Assessment," in The Sourcebook of Listening Research: Methodology and Measures, eds. Debora Worthington and Graham D. Bodie (Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons, 2017), 3-17. ↵
- Laura Janusik, "Listening Pedagogy: Where Do We Go from Here?" in Listening and Human Communication in the 21st century, ed. Andrew Wolvin (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 193-224. ↵
- "A ILA Definition of Listening." Listening Post, 53 (April 1995): 1, 4-5. ↵
- "Definition of Listening," Global Listening Centre. http://www. https://www.globallisteningcentre.org/definition-of-listening/. ↵