Argument Analysis: Discriminative Listening

Last week I went to Walmart to purchase a specific item, purchased it, and then attempted to leave with the product that I had paid for. However, upon trying to leave, the security anti-theft scanners started beeping. The greeter walked up to me and I had to anxiously and quickly shuffle through my bag of donuts and the product to prove that I had purchased everything. After proving that there was nothing in my bag that wasn’t on the receipt, I was allowed to leave the store. The event of the security scanners going off, the greeter checking my bag, and me leaving is a Discriminative Listening experience because the listening I was applying to the greeter and security siren wasn’t with the intent to comprehend- as I already knew that the auditory stimuli meant that something on my person hadn’t been scanned by the machine. The textbook describes Discriminative Listening as “to distinguish the auditory and visual stimuli. Discriminative listening is at the base of all the listening that we do; we must differentiate the auditory and visual messages at any other level” (Coakley & Wolvin, 152). This definition means that any listening event that requires the separate recognition of different auditory stimuli and visual stimuli

Thus, nonverbal cues, movement, and body language can all serve as stimuli that a listener must acknowledge, interpret, and assign value to. These stimuli can “complement… contradict… or replace vernal messages” (173), making Discriminative Listening all the more important. In my example, part of the visual stimuli that I encountered was the attendant moving closer to me and reaching for the bag, which obviously reinforced my understanding that the greeter needed to check my