ABSTRACT
In fact, as you will see in the following discussion, without a meaningful listener, conversations tend to flounder and eventually grind to a halt.
Traditionally listeners have been considered part of the background of a conversation, meaning that a listener was simply considered a speaker in waiting.1 As one communication scholar put it, when looking at a conversation, many researchers focus on the source or the effect, not the process, which includes listening.2 Laura Janusik, a listening scholar, said that such a perspective ignores the transactional nature of conversations.3 In the context of conversations, all parties are both a sender and a receiver, creating a transactional process where the listener both receives and responds.
