Listening with an Accent—or How to Loeribari

Abstract

Each foreigner's spoken English, determined by a mother tongue, each person's noise, fell on a coloring ear, which bent the listener's eye and, consequently, the speaker's countenance; it was a kind of narrowing, and unconscious on the part of the listener, who listens in judgment, judging the speaker even before the meaning or its soundness were attended to.-Li-Young Lee, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance [Speaking nearby is] a speaking that does not objectify, does not point to an object as if it is distant from the speaking subject or absent from the speaking place. . . . To say therefore that one prefers not to speak about but rather to speak nearby, is a great challenge. Because actually, this is not just a technique or a statement to be made verbally. It is an attitude in life, a way of positioning oneself in relation to the world.-Trinh T. Minh-ha, in an interview with Nancy Chen