This article unveils and discuss hearing and sound related metaphors in various European languages and shows that ‘hearing’ is closely equated with senses of belonging and togetherness. Sound metaphors are often connected to ideas of physical proximity, which also is an idea often associated with communities and belonging. Further, the publication discusses how traditional anthropological understandings of communities are phonocentric, and also is related to the confusion of language with speech. As a consequence of stressing the meaning of sound and hearing for establishing proximal human relationships, deaf people’s transitory and translocal experiences of community and belonging is not always recognized.
