The post you're responding to this qualified it with "as long as both participants are willing to yield to interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts when interrupting" - that addresses your point. This doesn't necessarily work well in a context where people are unfamiliar, but with close friends/colleagues/family who are all on board with this conversation paradigm and familiar with each other's interruptive style, it works very well.
That's a good addition: if the participants do not trust one another, the interrupt-denies and counter-interrupts are not going to work.
As far the actual signaling goes, AFAICT it's pretty built-in (though I can imagine in other countries for instance there are likely enough differences that you'd have to take time to learn specific signals): I can go into this style of conversation immediately with strangers as long as we're at least giving each other a little benefit of the doubt.
It isn't a straw man, though. It literally happens all the time. Role play a woman in an office. And, I should have stated flat out I can see this style can exist. My discourse is why not to lead in with it. Pretty much anywhere.
I think I see what you're saying, and it makes sense. But in a scenario with abusive power dynamics injustice is going to play out the same regardless of preferred conversation style, an outlet will trivially be found.
Ok, I grant that going full on abusive is not helpful. Such that I apologize on jumping there immediately. :(
My concern is more in the ones that aren't quite as stark. Role play that you are talking to someone that doesn't feel safe enough to tell you that they don't feel perfectly safe. Now, how do you know this? If they felt safe, you could ask. But, we have established that they don't, per the role play.
And this is a large part of why the conversation around "privilege" is so tough. At large, what we call "privilege" can be easily recast to more subtle dynamics of folks that are allowed to give voice without as much interruptions. Note, not none. Just fewer. (Note that there are obviously other aspects to this that don't necessarily make the recasting.)
What I'm describing is founded on both participants being well-intentioned. If one person interrupts another to ask for a clarification, or to let them know they are already aware of something, and the original speaker is threatened by it, I would say this is an unusual circumstance: someone with a preoccupation about being interrupted may feel that way and may need special treatment, sure. If they are uncomfortable about it, hopefully the well-intentioned interrupter is able to perceive that. If there is a combo of someone with this preoccupation + someone who is bad at reading body language, that would be unfortunate.
As far as that recasting of privilege, it's an insightful metaphor imo, but at the end of the day still just a metaphor: the dynamics of not having your voice heard in society are in practice just a separate matter from this communication style.
Yeah, to pile on with anecdata here (TFA opens by characterizing their early experience as "Growing up with friends who were disproportionately male and disproportionately nerdy"), my experience is that majority male spaces are interrupt culture, minority male spaces are wait culture, and non-males effectively get "shouted down" in interrupt cultures.
My brain (maybe this is arrogant but here we go) works faster than conversation so I have to work harder in wait cultures, but after years of this I'm 100% on board. I _super hate_ to be interrupted: I don't go on and on and I'm generally saying things I want others to hear. People think they know what I'm going to say, they almost never do. People want to interrogate a minor thing I just said, but it derails us all and wasn't the overarching point I was trying to make. On and on.
I'm not saying "don't ever ever interrupt"; sometimes it's critical to stop--respectfully--and clarify something important, like "aha that's what we're misunderstanding here" or whatever. But it should be like, "I know interrupting is disrespectful, but I feel like we could solve this right now, so bear with me." I think what most people in this thread are talking about isn't the occasional interruption, but the constant interrupt/overtalk style.
Anyway, maybe there are others with experiences in diverse workplaces (genders, races, backgrounds, etc.) where interrupt culture works, but I'm skeptical. I think in those situations you're always building mutual respect and team trust, and as such interrupt culture is out of reach. I disagree that these issues are separate from communication style--the medium is the message here and interrupt culture benefits people who haven't experienced barriers to interrupting/overtalking others--largely not women, but also not introverts or people with anxiety, etc. I think if you're "well-intentioned", you're taking those factors into consideration as well.
Oral arguments before the Supreme Court are a fairly formalized interrupt culture in which the justices literally interrupt the attorneys to ask questions, and funny enough, the women justices tend to speak more than the men justices. Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.
> Clarence Thomas famously speaks the least; he actually would prefer to hear out the attorneys making their case to the court.
Eh, my impression is that he's extremely arrogant and doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He's deeply uncurious and consequently relatively ignorant. He rarely engages in good faith with the facts and merits, and frequently misconstrues them to suit his own ideology. These are not the acts of an active listener who wants to learn and be shaped by what they learn. They're the acts of someone who believes they've got it all figured out.
I'm basing this off of what Justice Thomas has said when he has been asked about this in the past. But if you want to form your impressions based on your personal biases and prejudices, there's nothing I can say to convince you otherwise.
No bias or prejudice here, just reading his opinions. But think about it for just a minute: there's never a mystery about how he's gonna vote--oral arguments never change his mind. Does that sound like a guy who's listening?
It really doesn't, though. For one, it is recursive. Can I interrupt a counter? What if it is already in a counter? Does it depend on why I'm interrupting?
That is, this all only works if you know what "plays" each side can do, and you agree on when each one can be played. Card games with instants captures this remarkably well. In that you have a finite number of "interrupt" cards, and are often limited to how many times you can play each one.
The rules (although I'll argue none are needed, see below) really are quite simple: yes, what I described above works recursively: there is no difference between a counter-interrupt and a counter-counter-interrupt.
All of this hinges on and ends up being managed by each person giving the other a certain amount of benefit of the doubt, that any of these interrupt-related actions are being done out of a genuine desire to communicate effectively (vs someone trying to make some kind of power play). With that trust in place you don't need to know any "rules", this all emerges quite naturally.
My assertion is that it is very very easy to miss "easy rules that were emergent and are working well" with "I didn't realize there is a social hierarchy here that I'm massively benefiting from." Or, worse, "there could be consequences for my interrupting this person, I should keep quiet and let it go."
But again, this isn't going to be the case among people who know each other well. My family and I are interrupters, and we've been at it for decades now - none of the issues you're raising would apply.
In terms of knowing when/whether you can interrupt the interrupter/counter-interrupt/etc., see my other post in this thread about how the time of interrupters talking over each other is a signal to both that's constantly evolving (because the increasing time is an increasingly strong signal).
For certain. I'm less arguing that it isn't a conversation style, than I am that it is a dangerous one. Even in families, it is easy to see this form lead to resentment between folks. Or a contest to be last person talking. In a large sense, mansplaining is similar. Echoing back and explaining things even to people that know them isn't, itself, bad. But it is very easy to portray in a negative light and should not be the assumed default.
Now, I fully grant that the largest poison in all of this is the transactional view of conversation. The interrupt style is still predicated on an open transaction that will eventually commit.
> My assertion is that it is very very easy to miss "easy rules that were emergent and are working well"
You are right, at least for people who have poor social skills, are emotionally unstable or immature in some way, including people with autism, ADHD, dementia, children, etc.
With such people arround, it may be better to have clearly defined rules for who speaks when. The same goes in situations where people come from very different background or there are very low levels of trust to start with.
The better a group of people are at communicating in a cooperative manner, the fewer hard rules are needed.
