How Listening to What Others Are Saying Fell out of Grace in Human Development

New session of the "Paris IAS Ideas" online talk series, with the participation of Elinor Ochs, Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles/ Paris IAS Fellow.

The "Paris IAS Ideas" online talk series features short and stimulating presentations from fellows of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, marking the beginning of 1-month writing residencies.

Session exclusively online and in English.
Free registration.
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Presentation

It is quite possible that an anthropologist such as myself would over-sentimentalize long ago ethnographic recordings of Samoan children's socialization into listening to what others around them are saying. Surrounded by family and community members, little ones faced outward as a moral index of respect. They were expected to overhear others and be overheard. Children under five could convey messages to chiefs and orators, transforming everyday Samoan words into a respect register acquired through overhearing. The vitality of overhearing echoes listening skills of young children across an array of social groups that are largely tangential to post-industrial economies. In contrast, overhearing has fallen out of grace as a developmental skill in high income countries. Instead, studies conducted largely in these countries overwhelmingly indicate that conversation between parent and young child rather than overhearing is the ideal path to communicative and educational competence. This is not surprising, given the time and labor that parents dedicate to conversing with small children. What is surprising is the academic ferocity directed against overhearing as a feasible path to linguistic and communicative competence. Sustained parent-child dialogue is deemed so critical to the child and the economy that international parenting interventions are underway to re-educate mothers in low and middle income countries to prioritize dyadic conversations with their infants.

Alternatively, anthropologists argue that the exclusive focus on parent-child conversation diminishes opportunities for young children to routinely learn from the content of others' conversations and languages, dialects, genres, and speech styles used. Routinely listening in on conversations among others also opens the possibility of generating children's empathy, even if they disagree or disapprove of others' perspectives. This essay argues that a predilection to overhear familiars and strangers is a vital and urgent moral imperative best acquired in early childhood.