Blog 1: September 5, 2017

Quote: “First, if listening is a stance or orientation to the world and to others, then we can begin to account for the ways contexts, individual experiences, and cultural expectations might shape our listening.” (Warren Fassett, 65)

Over the past two weeks as I have been reading for my communication and culture course my attention has been brought to many new concepts. One of these major concepts that has stuck out to me is hearing versus listening and what both really mean. In the past I have always kind of thought of them as one in the same and that one uses their ears to hear and listening is what follows. I always just thought that it was just a matter of if one was actively listening or not, then I stubbled upon the quote above. In the quote it says that one’s listening is shaped by context, experiences, and culture and I had never thought of listening being a stance in that way. I read the quote over and over again to make sure I was understanding exactly what it was saying and as I did that it started to make sense to me. For example I am going to understand and perceive something many different ways solely based on the context of who is speaking. In addition I am quicker to tune someone or something out based on my past experiences and culture. A prime example of this is in the movie Mean Girls when the main character Katy goes to high school for the first time. Katy has lived in Africa her whole life where her parents have been studying animals and she has never been exposed to public schooling, therefore when she goes to high school she is willing to fully listen to her first friends in high school and perceive the school through their lense because she has no context or experience in public school.

Now Mean Girls may be a funny example to use here but I think that it points out that it is important to see how our listening is affected. It is very valuable to know that every person’s listening is affected based upon culture, experience, and context because the next time I go to tune someone out just because they may have different life experiences than me I will think twice. Or maybe next time I am not knowledgeable on a subject I will think twice before listening to everything from one person’s perspective and seeing everything from one side of experiences, culture, and context.