The Most Important Sentence-January

         For anybody who does not know, hearing and listening are two different events. Hearing is the process of sound waves hitting your ear drums, and your brain then configures the message. While on the other hand, listening is when you engage with what someone has to say. While listening, you comprehend the meaning of what someone is trying to communicate to you. This semester all three of my communication classes have reiterated this over and over again.

       The sentence that stood out to me from the readings, is from chapter four of the book. It states, “…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 2015). This sentence basically means that if listening is looked at as an approach to our past experiences, then we can only assume that our culture and participation in the world shapes how we listen. This is best expressed in the Forbes articles “How Culture Affects Communication” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolkinseygoman/2011/11/28/how-culture-controls-communication/2/#55ff62e56362). This article contains ideas associated with mine. For example, it explains how cultures are either high context or low text, and a number of other ways cultures are different. The article explains how these differences in culture effect how we as humans communicate. With listening being such a big part of communication, it goes without saying how this articles pertains to this blog post.

       The idea of how our culture and experiences shape our listening is important because not everybody’s culture and past experiences are the same. This should inform you that not everybody listens the same way. If somebody was to think the opposite of what I just had to say, then their might be mass confusion the next time that particular someone talked with another individual outside of their own culture, or shared ideas with someone with way different individual experiences.

       Listening in my opinion is the most important part of communication. With that being said, I hope you digest these ideas laid out to you in this blog post, and start to ponder about different ways we listen. I also hope you think about why it is important to experience other people’s culture, and to try to understand how a particular person’s experiences have shaped their listening.

Warren, John T., and Deanna L. Fassett. Communication: a critical/Cultural introduction. 2nd ed., Sage, 2015.