#not everyone likes conversation analysis but whatever
I have thoughts about the whole feminist anti-interrupting thing. Like I agree, men do talk over people and it is disrespectful, but I also think there are cultures, specifically Jews, where talking over each other is actually a sign of being engaged in the conversation. It’s something I really struggle with in the south, because up in New York, even non-Jews participated in this cooperative conversation style, but down here, whenever I do it by accident, the whole convo stops and it gets called out and it’s a whole thing. Idk idk I feel like there’s different types of interruptive like there’s constructive interrupting where you add on to whatever is being said - helpful interrupting, and then there’s like interrupting where you just start saying something unrelated because you were done listening. I have ADHD so I’ve def done the latter too by accident, but I’m talking about being more accepting of the former.
I think a lot of the social mores leftists enforce around communication tend to be very white. Like Jews are not the only group of people that have distinct communication styles. Like the enforcement of turn-based communication, not raising your voice (not just in anger but also in humor or excitement), etc. it’s always interesting that the most pushback I get about how I communicate come from white people (mostly women actually, white men just give me patronizing looks because they don’t feel like they can call me out in same way). Like I’ve been teaching these workshops, and a few of them have been primarily black people, and I’ve noticed black people will also engage in cooperative interrupting (and I love it!). This isn’t a developed thought and I welcome feedback. Idk I think there should be space in leftist organizing for more diverse communication styles.
Here’s a source:
As a linguist: overlapping talk is not the same thing as an interruption!
An interruption is specifically intended to stop another person from speaking so you can take over. Other reasons that talk might overlap:
- close latching – how much time should I give between when you stop talking and when I start? Very close latching can feature a lot of overlaps.
- participatory listening – how do I signal to you that I’m engaged with what you’re saying and paying attention? Do I make any noise at all, or do I limit myself to minimal “backchannel” noises (mm-hmm, ah, yeah), or do I fully verbalize my reactions as you’re going? Maybe even chime in along with you, if I anticipate what you’re about to say, to show how well we’re vibing?
- support request – this can shade into interruption as a form of sealioning, but if someone interjects a request like “I didn’t catch that” or “What’s that mean?” it’s not really an interruption, because they’re not trying to end/take my turn away, they’re inviting me to keep going with clarification/adaptation.
- asides – if there’s more than two people involved in a conversation, a certain amount of cross-talk is probably inevitable.
The norms around these kinds of overlaps vary – by context (we all use more audible backchannel on the phone; an interview is not a sermon is not a casual chat), by culture, and yes, by gender, which is why it’s a feminist issue. But gender doesn’t exist in a vaccuum! Some reasons overlaps might be mis-interpreted as interruptions when they’re not intended to be:
- norms about turn latching: someone who’s not used to close-latching conversation might feel interrupted or stepped on when talking to someone who is. The converse is that someone who’s expecting close-latching might feel the absence of it as awkward silence, withdrawal, coldness, etc.
- norms about backchannel: if you’re not expecting me to provide running commentary on your story or finish your sentences (or if I’m doing it wrong) then you might feel interrupted. But if you’re expecting that level of feedback you might feel ignored.
- neurodivergence: If I have auditory processing problems, I might take longer to respond to you than you’re expecting. If I have impulse control problems, I might blurt something out as soon as I think of it, but I don’t necessarily want you to stop. If I have trouble with nonverbal or paralinguistic cues, I might not latch my turns the way you expect, or my backchannel might be timed in a way you don’t expect.
- Non-native speakers of a language may need more time to process speech; may speak more slowly and with pauses in different places than native speakers; may not pick up the same cues about turn-latching and backchannel, resulting in a timing difference; may need to make more requests for support.
Norms around conversation tend to be super white/Western/male/NT; even among linguists, the way we talk about analyzing talk usually presupposes discrete turns, with one person who “has the floor” and everyone else listening. It even gets coded into our technology – I thing the account’s gone private, but someone recently tweeted, “For the sake of my wife’s family, Zoom needs to incorporate an ‘ashkenazi jewish’ checkbox” because the platform is programmed to try to identify a “main speaker” and auto-mute everyone else. Most of the progress on this front in linguistics has been pushed by Black women and Jewish women, or else we’d probably still be acting like Robert’s Rules represent the natural expression of human instincts.
And it’s very White Feminism to recognize how conversations styles have disparate impacts across gender lines without also recognizing other axes along which conversation styles vary, once that empower us as well as oppress us. Just because I feelinterrupted doesn’t mean I aminterrupted, and it definitely doesn’t mean I have the right to scream “EVERYBODY SHUT UP!!” until I’m the only one talking.
I don’t … have a great way to end this? Just that it’s good to recognize competing needs in communication, and have some humility and intentionality about whose needs gets prioritized and how.
