ABSTRACT Research in linguistic perception has shown that social knowledge shapes how speech is processed, with listeners’ social biases influencing their interpretation of the speech signal. Such findings are inherently in step with the concept of listening practices in linguistic anthropology. Miyako Inoue's foundational work on the “listening subject” highlights how meaning emerges through listeners’ ideological positions, demonstrated through an analysis of Japanese schoolgirl speech. I argue that sociolinguistic perception work has much to be gained from integrating a listening subject framework, foregrounding the social conditions enabling perception and emphasizing interpretive agency. In this commentary, I focus on how the listening subject is constituted through contrast with the object of speech perception and explore how this dynamic intersects with ongoing work on in‐group/out‐group identity and the role of experience in shaping sociolinguistic perception, specifically drawing on my research on US regional dialect perception. Finally, I discuss how experimental sociolinguistics and public engagement efforts might be enhanced by critically examining the listening subject positions of research participants.

ABSTRACT This study examines how Taiwanese members of parliament (MPs) deploy self‐referring expressions—specifically, the formal first‐person singular běnxí —to negotiate their institutional standing and project political power. By operationalizing access to objective power using the margin of victory (MoV) as one possible proxy, the research shows that the absence of clear, objectively validated power may drive exploitation of linguistic variation as symbolic work. Analyzing parliamentary transcripts from 2020 to 2021, the findings reveal that MPs with narrower electoral margins—indicative of heightened electoral insecurity—use běnxí more frequently, engaging in greater symbolic work to assert their political legitimacy. Additionally, political party affiliation interacts with MoV in influencing the use of běnxí , but does not emerge as a main effect on its own. These results underscore the role of power negotiation in shaping linguistic behavior.