Wes Molebash

Listening to a book counts as reading it because it is a book. 👇 Books are a product of print culture, not oral culture. A written text that is read or listened to is still a written text which uses language differently from language produced by oral speech. Think of conversation or even podcasts. No one says they “read” a podcast they listened to because a recorded informal conversation is not the same kind of text as book or poem that is crafted by first putting words on a page or slate or screen. Now, listening with the ears is certainly different from reading with the eyes, but a book is still a book—a product of print culture. How we experience language is secondary (though still significant) to the form that language takes. You can read a Shakespearean drama in a book or listen to it being read on Audible, and those two experiences are much more similar than watching the play being performed. Listening to a reader read is reading. That’s why we read to children.