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Comment by ducktypegoose | Hacker News Reader

Most interrupters are exactly like andrewcarter here, they just get excited. When someone does it they're most likely not trying to be rude, and it's well within your consideration to air your complaint, "I am happy to hear your thoughts, but please let me finish my own before you share yours." It isn't a rude or confrontational sentiment. Nobody likes being interrupted, and nobody likes being called-out as an interrupter. Do that once or twice in a meeting and the over-talkers may all but stop moving forward. Nobody is going to resent you for laying down some fundamental courtesies, especially since it means everyone will have better opportunity to speak without interruption.

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I have this issue too, I think it also has to do a bit with cultural background sometimes.

I grew up in a hispanic family in a majority hispanic community, where my everyday conversation with people was people talking over each other. It was common to start making your point while the other person was still finishing theirs.

The difference is, because everyone did it, we would just keep talking, even if we were cut off, and finish our thought. The other person would hear it, while still talking, and the conversation continues naturally. If you were in a group, you had to go louder than the currently speaking person in order to "grab the baton" and get your word in (something I was often too quiet for).

This was my normal throughout childhood.

It was a culture shock when I went to college and eventually someone called me out for cutting people off all the time. It was then that I realized that now, when I cut someone off, they actually stopped talking.

I still struggle with this, because I reflexively expect people to not let me stop them.

"One of the most striking aspects of high involvement style that I found and analyzed in detail was the use of what I called 'cooperative overlap': a listener talking along with a speaker not in order to interrupt but to show enthusiastic listenership and participation. The concept of overlap versus interruption became one of the cornerstones of my argument that the stereotype of New York Jews as pushy and aggressive is an unfortunate reflection of the effect of high involvement style in conversation with speakers who use a different style. (In my study I called the other style 'high considerateness')."

Deborah Tannen, Gender and Discourse. Oxford University Press, 1994

https://www.thoughtco.com/cooperative-overlap-conversation-1...

I like this terminology of "high involvement"! My experience with this style is also that if someone doesn't interrupt me I just keep talking, awkwardly, _hoping_ that someone will start talking "with" me (allowing me to pass the conversational baton, and indicating they understand my point), and if no one does I feel like no one must be understanding what I am saying (or worse, that no one is even listening) and eventually feel more and more antsy until I almost have to give up on the whole conversation.

Scottish guy in the US here, I've had to train myself out of this habit here (still working on it). Not always well received in the South!

This is an absolute gem. Thanks for sharing that. Sometimes you just need to see it written down to know it's right.

agreed fully - Cubans seem to do this a lot; at first i would get really frustrated bc i thought i was being interrupted but i think it's buena onda

they also frequently ask if everything's ok, if you understand, etc. at the slightest pause in talking, which is kind of hilarious sometimes

yep, I'm actually cuban american, this is accurate =P

"I have this issue too, I think it also has to do a bit with cultural background sometimes."

Completely agree. I'm not Hispanic, but I grew up in the south in a household where talking over each other was the norm. A different culture, but culture indeed. College is also where I learned this was considered bad practice / rude

> College is also where I learned this was considered bad practice / rude

I think it's important to note that it is considered bad/rude in most american culture. Manners are relative to the culture you are living in. This style is certainly not rude in Cuban circles, for example.

It's like how belching at a restaurant is rude in the US, but a sign of respect to the chef in Japan.

I agree with you. It's just trading one set of cultural norms for another.

As a side note, when I notice these differences, I like to reason from first principles and decide if I should change my behavior (without completely alienating myself from my peers). A Japanese chef might consider my belch a sign of respect, but how respectful is it to the people around you eating? A gross smelling burp could make me loose my appetite completely.

Italian here, the exact same experience growing up. It was expected that you had a conversation this way. Why waste time waiting for each other to finish?

Because you want to hear what people have to say? Why listen or speak if it doesn't matter if people hear or pay attention?

You hear them as you speak. Understanding that you are always heard was one of the hardest parts of my own cultural transition from southern US to Italy. (I'm an American-Italian immigrant.)

Unfortunately I developed a kind of intense mix of the two cultures and I have to work hard not to dominate others in (non Italian) conversations. I try to de-interrupt by reminding someone who stopped taking of what they were talking about and asking them to continue. This also isn't ideal because it's forceful but it helps.

You hear them as you speak? You can't effectively do this. It sounds like the people on Jerry Springer to me. Without a mediator, the problem never gets solved because they think they're effectively able to listen and talk at the same time, but they're doing one thing (talking) more dominantly.

Because often it doesn't take someone to complete their sentence for their point to be made. If you pay close attention next time you are in a conversation with people you know well, you will often know what someone is going to say before they have finished saying it. Personally I hate being interrupted and also always wait my turn to speak but at the same time I can get impatient waiting for someone to say what I already know they are going to say.

That's true in some cases, but untrue often enough that I disagree.

In my experience, interrupters frequently assume something entirely different from what was actually being said, or even cut off the speaker before a "but" and wind up responding to the exact opposite of the intended point. This is needlessly annoying and confusing to almost everyone involved.

OK, so everybody did it and nobody was an asshole.

But it's hard to imagine you ever reached any sane conclusion to these discussions?

It just seems like a bunch of primates expressing their feelings, opinions and tribal affiliations, but not a way to make good decisions.

Or am I missing the point?

No, I assure you sane conclusions can be reached with these discussions...

It's just another conversation style, I don't need to hear the end of your sentence to know the point you are making, at a certain point the end of the sentence is likely fluff. If the end is important, I'll still hear it, and if it changes what my response is, I'll probably stop and react mid-stream.

OK, I'll retreat back to that you have to be used to this type of interaction to take part in it, and outsiders will likely not do well in it.

This totally cultural. I am French, and when I was living in Spain, it was very difficult to get a full sentence out, but in Germany, I am often called out for interrupting people all the time (and I master Spanish and German at a similar level, so this is not related to language proficiency).

What I also noticed now that I try to pay attention to it is that I am practically unable to say a word in a German conversation if I try not to interrupt. I seem to be missing the cues that seem to say "you may now speak", and have the feeling I get interrupted all the time. I guess those cues are culture-specific and internalized over time.

That might be relevant to the OP 's question: in a multi-cultural team, one might need to develop a set of cues that are specific to that context. That can only come by discussing the topic one way or another, be it during the meetings, in breaks, at lunch... In my case, telling exactly what I described above, in a "aren't cultural differences interesting" way helped.

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