Listening, Language, and Colonialism on Main Street, Gibraltar Bryce Peake This essay explores the ways in which listening exists as a means for the maintenance and operationalization of power in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. On Main Street, a struggle between Spanish ways of practicing space and British ways of representing space is played out in a discourse between the soundscapes of spoken Llanito and British nationalistic parades. Utilizing ethnographic research gathered in 2009, and drawing on practice theory and semiotic approaches, I argue that an examination of how people listen on Main Street makes legible the complex power dynamics between Gibraltarians, Spanish-ness, and the British state. Keywords: Soundscape; Language; Listening; Urban Space; Colonialism; Practice The sounds of spoken language and the perception of urban space are deeply intertwined in the colonial politics articulated on Main Street, Gibraltar. Gibraltarians*whose families were forced to leave Gibraltar during World War II by the British government, and who often have familial ties to southern Spain*are often posed in a cultural conflict between British nationals and expatriates and Spanish immigrants in Gibraltar, despite the co-existence of British loyalties and Spanish mannerisms among many Gibraltarians. This conflict is often manifested through cultural politics of language use, and one means of under- standing the negotiation of these cultural politics is through a study of listening. In this essay I examine the ways in which the cultural practice of listening is often used to influence specific conceptualizations and representations of space in urban Gibraltar, in such a way that reproduces colonial power relationships between Gibraltarians and the British state. I am particularly concerned with how the practice Bryce Peake is a PhD student in Communication and Society at the School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon. This research was made possible through funding and support from the Gibraltar Museum, Institute for Gibraltarian Studies, and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. I would like to thank Greg Wise and the two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions, as well as Carol Stabile and Phil Scher for their insight, guidance, and criticism. Correspondence to: Bryce Peake, School of Journalism and Communication, 1787 Agate Hall, Room 124, 1275 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA. Email: bpeake@uoregon.edu. ISSN 1479-1420 (print)/ISSN 1479-4233 (online) # 2012 National Communication Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2012.663094 Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 2012, 120, iFirst article