According to the article, reading, writing, speaking, and listening were cornerstones of western rhetorical studies for more than 2,000 years. However, in the 20^th century, recovery of rhetoric within composition studies, reading and writing reign as the dominant tropes for interpretive intervention, speaking places a respectable third, while listening runs a poor, poor fourth. Precisely, the article reinforces the facts that listening has been neglected. In regards to this, the essay herein is set to discuss the emergence of rhetorical listening, how disciplinary and cultural biases displaces listening and finally rhetorical listening as a trope for interpretive invention, or how to break the back of words.

Why is it so hard to listen to one another? Why is it so hard to resist a guilt/blame logic when we do hear? Why is it so hard to identify with one another when we feel excluded? Why is it so hard to focus simultaneously on communities and differences among ourselves? During the conversation, rhetorical strategies for fostering cross-cultural communication is essential.

When discussing how disciplinary and cultural biases displace listening, one disciplinary bias that explains our field’s neglect of listening may be found, most obviously, in the work we do. The author further states that many scholars have appropriated Western rhetorical theories to theorize writing and the teaching of writing. The other disciplinary bias that explains our neglect of listening is that Western rhetorical theories themselves have traditionally slighted listening. For instance, classical theories foreground the rhetor’s speaking and writing as a means of persuading audiences. The author further established that such theories are only secondarily concerned with how the audience should listen and hardly at all concerned with what Mitchelle Ballif calls the desires of particular audience members.

Finally, the author further provides an example of rhetorical listening which emerges in Marge Piercy’s poem. Based on this poem, Piercy attributes the success of their relationship, in part, to each woman’s desire to whisper. In conclusion, defining rhetorical listening as a trope of the interpretive invention not only emphasizes the discursive nature of rhetorical listening but also plays with the etymology of the term trope as a turning.