blog about interruptions and communication

June 13, 2024 1:10 PM

I remember reading several years ago a blog post or similar about how some groups of people interrupt each other to show enthusiasm, framed as the author being explained this by a friend who he called Gandalf because he was a clever wizard or something like that. i'm pretty sure I read it hear because I remember a comment complaining about the wizard shtick. Does anyone know what I'm thinking of?
posted by bq to MetaFilter-Related at 1:10 PM (6 comments total)

The Church of Interruption
posted by 4th number at 1:21 PM on June 13 [13 favorites]

I don't know about the Gandalf thing but the idea seems relevant to Deborah Tannen's work on the New York Jewish Conversational Style? She bascially says some interruptions are rude, but some are friendly / culturally polite, as they signify shared ground, enthusiasm, and emotional synchronicity. Here's a NYT Paywall article. (And it was previously discussed on MeTa).
posted by nouvelle-personne at 1:50 PM on June 13 [7 favorites]

Previously:
Let's talk about talking
We've had Ask vs Guess, and now...
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:00 PM on June 13 [2 favorites]

Thanks, it was The Church of Interruption!
posted by bq at 4:14 PM on June 13 [2 favorites]

I've spent my fair amount of time being grumpy with this place but I'll be forever grateful for discussion in some long-ago thread pointing out how interrupting can affect men and women differently, as a direct result I always ask people in a group conversation who just got talked over what they were going to say.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:31 PM on June 14 [9 favorites]

I read an article many years ago about teaching reading to native Hawaiian children. The researcher discovered that going around the room asking children in turn to read out loud did not work well and hypothesized that was because it was an alien way of speaking for them: in their own families interruption was the norm.
posted by mareli at 7:10 PM on June 16