Suppose someone is speaking and another person, eager to express agreement, chimes in at the end of their sentence. Over Zoom, this tends to derail the discussion or narrative.... Then there’s the turn-waiting....
[S]ociolinguist Deborah Tannen... describes cooperative overlap as “talking along to show enthusiasm, as a way of encouraging the other person to keep speaking rather than cutting them off.” Her initial research focused on the difference between Jewish New Yorkers with an Eastern European background (who were inclined toward talking over) and Californians of a Christian background (who tended to feel interrupted).
Well, there you have it. California is winning.
Meanwhile, for people who don’t particularly like the idea of fighting to be heard, the Zoom era — which creates more orderly queues for commenting during conversation — has been a boon.
The article doesn't mention Justice Thomas at this point, but should. He didn't speak at oral argument for a decade, and now, he's a full and equal participant.
ADDED: Despite the usual eagerness to talk about race, this WaPo article avoids the subject. Because the idea is that overlapping, collaborative conversation is good, there's an avoidance of the possibility that it's part of white supremacy. Thus we have Christian Californians on the anti-interruption side and Jewish New Yorkers as their opposite. Where are the black people?
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2 comments:
wmmw writes:
“Hi Ann, I don't think this is nearly as complicated as the article would like to think. As far as I can tell, Zoom conversations are "ruined" because they're not close enough to real time to function as such. Have you tried to sing "Happy Birthday" on a Zoom call? Everyone tries to sing along with what they hear and it just falls apart. So the issue is the medium, not any conversational style.
p.s. if you use this, you can refer to me as "wmmw" if you like.”
Leora writes: "Condo board and member meetings are much improved by Zoom. The emotional charge that some people get from taking over the meeting is lessened so those people tend to come to the point more quickly. The ability to send the moderator a question via chat makes sure people who would never interrupt get their questions answered. The influence of cliques is lessened making people more likely to give a hearing to people who aren’t dominant in some group."
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