Opening Space: A Contextual and Constitutive Definition of Listening

This is one part of a forum issue entitled, “Reconsidering the Definition of Listening.” For thirty years, the International Listening Association (ILA) has defined listening as a cognitive-behavioral sequence of receiving, constructing meaning, and responding. In this essay, I propose that this is grounded in a transmission ontology that is now insufficient for the interdisciplinary and multifaceted listening field today. I propose a revised, constitutive definition that fits the current historical context: Listening is the practice of opening space for an other’s expression through which shared worlds are constituted. Drawing on Western phenomenology, ancient Chinese philosophy, and critical scholarship on the more-than-human, I argue that before we speak, someone or something has already listened us into being. Because defining listening is an act of world-making, I demonstrate how universalized behavioral standards can marginalize diverse practices and create exclusionary theoretical and practical environments. The definition I propose serves as a normative intervention by cultivating the capacity to open space for diverse others, both human and more-than-human. Ultimately, this framework provides an architecture to unite a pluralistic field and embrace responsibility for the worlds we co-create as listening scholars and practitioners.