Listening Being vs Active Listening — Study Notes
Objective
Understand what 'listening being' means in Elizabeth Lapari’s framework and how it differs from conventional teaching of listening (often framed as 'active listening').
Explore how Lapari expands our understanding of listening beyond the standard classroom advice and why this matters for interpersonal interaction, ethics, and democracy.
Key Concepts and Context
Field context: Listening teaching has long been part of communication studies.
Author and work: Elizabeth Lapari (in 2010) writes a provocative article in the journal Communication Theory that challenges what had been treated as common knowledge about listening and offers a distinct, broader conception: listening being.
Purpose of Lapari’s piece: Not to reject active listening but to expand the repertoire of listening: there are additional modalities of listening that suit different interpersonal contexts and ethical aims.
Core claim: Listening being centers listening (the act of listening) rather than speaking or extracting information from the speaker; it can complement active listening in a toolbox of listening practices.
Abstract as guide: Lapari frames listening being through an abstract that sketches its horizon-like, utopian quality and positions listening as a path beyond discursive thought, language limitations, and dualistic thinking.
Active Listening vs Listening Being (Contrast and Synthesis)
Active listening (the traditional standard):
Associated behaviors: focused attention, nonverbal engagement, listening with a purpose, concentrating fully, sometimes responding, making connections to prior knowledge.
Function: often aimed at understanding enough to answer questions, perform well in exams, or succeed in interviews.
Tendency: centers the listener’s cognitive processing to respond or extract value for themselves.
Listening being (Lapari’s alternative):
Aims to go beyond language, dualism, and mere discursive thought.
Emphasizes an ethical stance: listening as a gift of attention to the other, without a calculated motive to gain something in return.
Metaphorically positions listening as an offering or self-transcendence: making space inside oneself to be with the other, sometimes at the expense of one’s own goals or plans.
Not a rejection of active listening but a re-framing: it can be used in personal relationships, civil discourse, and democratic life to foster true understanding.
Implication: You need multiple listening modes to handle different kinds of interactions (e.g., studying for a test vs. comforting a friend).
The Abstract and Foundational Questions
Abstract purpose and function:
Provides a quick, dense preview of the article’s argument and scope.
Helps a reader judge whether the essay will help answer their research questions; acts as trajectory for the piece.
Lapari’s abstract presents the core idea: 'listening being' resides beyond language, dualism, and conceptual thought; it is a horizon toward which we might travel, not a definitive state.
Translating abstract ideas into the classroom:
The professor uses the abstract to frame what follows, connecting it back to Burkian (Kenneth Burke) ideas about language, symbol, and interpretation.
The abstract signals a philosophical challenge to conventional listening practices and invites exploration of the ethics of listening.
Burke, Language, and the Limitations of Language
Background concepts from Kenneth Burke used to scaffold Lapari’s argument:
Symbol, reference, encoding/decoding: language is a significant mediator in meaning, but each word carries limited perspective-based meaning.
Perspective limitation: interpretation is bounded by one’s own standpoint.
Dualism and conceptual thought: language tends to create binaries (this vs that, student vs teacher) and rigid filing-cabinet-like connotations, obscuring nuance.
Language-as-fiction (filing the referent): the symbol is not the referent; meaning is never fully captured by language alone.
Examples and implications:
The snake example demonstrates different connotations attached to the same symbol (word) due to varied perspectives.
Dualism creates sharp divides that hinder recognizing complexity and overlap in lived experiences.
Conceptual thought traps: our expectations and schemas (filing cabinets) shape how we interpret others’ communications.
Connection to society and politics:
In contemporary discourse, language can crystallize black-and-white thinking; people can hold conflicting beliefs simultaneously, which language often struggles to capture.
Outcome for listening: If we want to hear with depth, we must acknowledge and partly suspend our own language-bound perceptions.
Discursive Thinking and the Shift to Listening Being
Discursive thinking: ongoing internal commentary that accompanies listening and speaking; may distract from truly hearing.
Listening being aims to slow or quiet discursive thinking to center the other’s voice and presence.
Listening being vs active listening: a conceptual shift where active listening is valuable but insufficient for deeper ethical engagement; listening being seeks to open space for radical alterity (genuinely different perspectives).
The role of the listener’s interior space:
The metaphor of the guest room: to truly listen, one might temporarily empty a space inside (metaphorically remove one’s own projects and concerns) to attend to the other’s experience.
This requires self-transcendence and renouncing immediate goals in the moment of listening with the other.
Ethical orientation:
Listening becomes a prior ethical act; the act of making space for the other is itself a moral action.
It enables community and democratic life to emerge not merely from speaking but from listening.
From Abstract to Practice: Tools, Moments, and Examples
The question of “what are the tools of listening being?” is signaled to be answered later in the text; the professor notes this is addressed in the subsequent pages, building toward actionable strategies.
Practical anecdotes in the lecture: different listening modes for different relational contexts
Listening to a five-year-old (Moniz/Lola) in a birthday moment: listening as care, presence, and validation, not to extract information or judge.
In a faculty meeting, listening shifts toward attending and weighing one’s own responses and decisions.
Core takeaway from these examples: the genre and aim of listening determine whether one should listen as an offering (listening being) or with a goal to gain (active listening).
The Ethical and Civic Dimensions
Radical alterity and everyday life:
Listening involves encountering radically other viewpoints that disrupt ordinary habits of thought.
It may require restraint from attempting to interpret or dominate the other’s perspective.
Democracy and community:
Community and democratic health depend on listening, not just speaking or contesting issues.
Across religious, philosophical, and secular traditions, many ethical systems converge on the importance of listening as a foundational practice for humane relations.
Cross-cultural and cross-tradition resonance:
Lapari’s reading draws on a wide array of traditions to emphasize that the value of listening appears across cultures and philosophies, which strengthens the argument for its central role in humane communication.
Page Anchors and Reading Strategy (What to Expect in the Text)
Early pages (roughly the first five pages) contain the heavy lifting and establishment of core ideas.
The abstract and the opening sections set up the dichotomy between listening being and conventional listening.
The etymology discussion on page 349–350 clarifies the distinction between:
Listen: from a root emphasizing attention and giving to the other (listening).
Hear: from a root emphasizing perception and reception of sound (hearing).
Notation:
In Lapari’s terms, listening is about giving attention; hearing is about receiving stimuli.
This distinction helps explain why passive reception rarely constitutes true listening.
Key Phrases and Concepts Worth Memorizing
“Listening being is a horizon toward which we might travel” ext{Listening being}
ightarrow ext{a horizon, not a state}“Listening thus involves an encounter with radical alterity”
“Community does not arise because of speaking; it arises because of listening”
“Ethical act” and “self-transcendence” as central features of true listening
“Terministic screens” (Burke) as lenses that shape perception; need for cleaner perspective to hear others
Etymology contrast: ext{Listening} eq ext{Hearing} with definitions:
ext{Listening} = ext{giving attention to the other}
ext{Hearing} = ext{receiving auditory input}
Implications for Exam Prep and Application
Be ready to explain how Lapari’s concept of listening being complements—not replaces—active listening.
Be prepared to discuss how discursive thinking can obstruct listening and how listening being seeks to quiet or bypass that internal discourse.
Be able to articulate the ethical dimension: listening as a form of care that requires space within one’s own cognitive and emotional life.
Connect to real-world contexts: education, political discourse, and democracy require listening that respects radical difference and aims at understanding rather than winning.
Use the animal/metaphor examples (snake, Lola’s birthday) to illustrate how different contexts require different listening orientations.
Remember the structural claim about abstractions: abstracts help researchers decide whether to engage with a text; Lapari’s abstract signals a challenge to conventional listening and a call to consider listening as a central practice of ethics and democracy.
Questions to Consider (Reflection prompts)
When in your own life have you relied on active listening in a way that still felt self-centered or goal-oriented? How might listening being address that situation?
How can you create a mental space (an ethical, internal “guest room”) to listen to someone with a viewpoint radically different from yours?
In what ways might democratic processes benefit from a greater emphasis on listening being, rather than solely on debate or argumentation?
Can you think of a recent situation where language limitations impeded understanding? How might Lapari’s framework help you reframe the exchange?
Quick Reference: Core Takeaways
Listening is an ethical act that involves giving attention to the other, not just taking in information. ext{Listening}
ightarrow ext{giving attention to the other}Hearing is the reception of sound; listening requires going beyond mere reception to intentional, other-centered attention. ext{Hearing}
ightarrow ext{receiving input}Language imposes limits (perspective, dualism, conceptual cabinets), which can hinder true listening; listening being seeks ways to move past those limits.
Abstracts in scholarly work serve as previews that help readers decide whether to engage with the text; Lapari’s abstract foreshadows a horizon rather than a fixed method.
Two listening practices can coexist: active listening (beneficial in many contexts) and listening being (essential for ethical engagement and democratic community).
Everyday acts of listening (e.g., listening to a friend in distress) illustrate how listening being prioritizes presence and openness over practical gain.