A Reconsideration of Dialogic Listening

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar VII
  In Paper Session: Ethics and (of) Listening

Abstract

This paper examines ethical aspects of dialogic listening, particularly as discussed by Richard L. Johannesen (1971) and by Johannesen, Valde and Whedbee (2008). The concept of dialogic communication, described as attitude or spirit of communication rather than any specific “method, technique, or format” (2008, p. 54), implies that dialogic communication is inherently ethical, particularly in contrast to its antithesis, monologic approaches to communication. In this sense, one could consider dialogue as an idealistic approach to communication. Particularly in relation to interpersonal dimensions of human listening, dialogue can be considered as idealistic, or transcendent, in human relationships (Smith, 1998, pp. 286-287). In relation to Johannesen’s six “characteristics of dialogue,” this paper evaluates the practicality of those characteristics in relation to the ethical idea, attempting to determine whether the dialogic approach to ethical listening has any degree of actual workability in human communication.

Author

• James Floyd, University of Central Missouri