Episode 14: On Conversational Style with Deborah Tannen

We all want to be heard and understood for what me mean by what we say.  But the style in which we converse flavors all of our interactions.  How we participate.  How we perceive others, and how others perceive us. Join us for a conversation with Deborah Tannen, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University and author of many books and articles about how the language of everyday conversation affects relationships.  We dig into interactional sociolinguistics:  how our skills at interacting depend on our conversational style rituals and habits, and how what we mean is often missed or misinterpreted when people with different styles interact. When I originally conceived of this podcast series on interruption, this was the interview at the top of my wish list!  Please check the show notes at www.weinterruptthis.com for links to all of the resources mentioned.

Episode Transcript

(00:04):
Conversational style where you can talk along,
you don't jump in anywhere.
It may sound to the person who doesn't share that style that you're jumping in anywhere.
We're not.
There's a whole array of cues that you're picking up.
We all want to be heard and understood for what we mean by what we say.

(00:27):
But the style in which we converse flavors all of our interactions,
how we participate,
how we perceive others and how others perceive us.
Join us for a conversation with Deborah Tannen,
distinguished University professor and Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University and author of many books and articles about how the language of everyday conversation affects relationships.

(00:49):
We dig into sociolinguistics,
how our skills at interacting,
depend on our conversational style,
rituals and habits and how,
what we mean is often missed or misinterpreted when people with different styles interact.
When I originally conceived of this podcast series an interruption.
This was the interview at the top of my wish list.
Please check out the show notes at www We interrupt this.com for links to all of the resources mentioned now on to the conversation,

(01:34):
Deborah.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Today,
I am honored to be talking with you.
I read your books when I was going through trying to understand how to communicate better myself in my career.
And as I was putting together this podcast,
I said,
oh,
my dream person to interview is Deborah Tan.
And this would be awesome.
So,
thank you so much for taking the time today.

(01:55):
I wanted just to start this off for people,
those three people in the world who don't know who you are.
If you could tell us a little bit about yourself,
most people will think of me first as the author of you just don't understand.
And that's a book that I wrote about how women and men tend to communicate because nothing is true of all women or all men.

(02:18):
But that's because that book was kind of a phenomenon.
It was on the New York Times best seller list,
nearly four years.
And people will usually say I read your first book,
but it wasn't my first book.
It was my 10th book.
I'm,
I'm a professor at Georgetown technical title is Distinguished University Professor.

(02:42):
I've,
I've been there pretty much my entire career.
I got my phd in linguistics at Berkeley and came directly to Georgetown a very long time ago,
1979.
So my field is linguistics.
What I do in that field is not typical for linguistics,
but there are some of us that do it.
And I was very fortunate in going to Berkeley where Robin Lakoff,

(03:06):
John Gers Wallace J,
three professors were trained as linguists but using their expertise to study how people talk.
And because we're linguists,
we look specifically and especially at the words,
that's what I decided to focus on my dissertation.

(03:27):
And my first book was not about gender.
I was not a gender specialist.
My specialty was what I call conversational style.
All the decisions that we have to make when we talk,
I'm often asked,
wouldn't this be a better world if everybody just said what they meant?
And my answer is we do,

(03:47):
but we say it,
we say it in our own conversational style.
If you talk to someone whose style is similar,
you can pretty much assume both of you the other must mean what I would mean or feel if I talk in that way,
when styles differ,
then you run into trouble,
you are gonna think they mean and they're gonna think you mean what they would be if they spoke in that way in that time?

(04:12):
And it may not be true by conversational style.
It's everything about how you say what you mean,
starting with timing.
How quickly or slowly do you speak?
How long a pause is normal between your turn and someone else's turn?
What are the cues by which you judge?

(04:32):
It's your turn or it's their turn?
What can you tell stories about?
How would you get to the point of the story.
How loudly or slowly do you speak?
How relatively direct or indirect are you?
So,
you've been doing conversational analy linguistics for your entire career?

(04:53):
I'm interested to learn what set you down that path.
What was it about linguistics that was attractive to you?
I began my graduate study in linguistics at the age of 29.
My major in,
in college was English literature.
I had a master's in English literature.

(05:15):
Immediately after college,
it worked a little while,
save some money.
You went off to Europe on a one way ticket and ended up in Greece and I stayed there for a while,
taught English.
So that was my first exposure to linguistics because a lot of people who taught English as a second language had that background in linguistics,
but that was not my interest at all.

(05:36):
I then got a master's in English and was a teacher of remedial writing and freshman composition.
So this takes,
and I,
I was teaching at Lehman College in,
in the Bronx.
Some people may have picked up with my uh slight accent here.
I grew up in Brooklyn.

(05:56):
And so when I did a dissertation on New York and California,
it was because I,
as a New Yorker frequently found myself misunderstood like Californians and I had picked a conversation and I didn't,
when I recorded the conversation,
I didn't know that would be the one I would use.
But when I ended up studying was myself,

(06:18):
my best friend,
his brother,
all from New York and then a friend of his from California,
his friend from California and someone from England.
So I've got my,
you know,
master's in English teaching on board.
And I'm thinking,
what do I want to do next?
I figured I could become an authority on teaching,

(06:38):
writing and move up in that world.
I could become a lawyer.
My father was a lawyer and that was something I thought about.
But maybe I wanted a phd and I thought of English literature,
which would be obvious.
But I started out by going to a linguistic institute.
Uh This is something linguistic society of America runs at different universities every summer.

(07:04):
So I had heard the word linguistics found it interesting,
didn't really know what it was.
I went to a linguistic institute and I was just lucky that summer,
all the linguists who studied everyday conversation with their,
it was a moment,
you know,
your life is so uh stochastic,

(07:24):
it just things happen.
It just happened that the field of linguistics was turning its attention right around then to everyday language and not just linguistics,
it was happening in sociology and philosophy in,
in many fields.
It was a zeitgeist.
And so it just piqued my imagination.
It combined my love of language because I had been this literary type from the beginning.

(07:51):
You know,
I was the one who was editor of the literary magazine and wrote stories and poems to my love of language.
But it was focusing it on human relationships.
What are people doing with language?
How is that affecting what goes on in the conversation?
But ultimately,
what goes on in their lives?

(08:26):
So you started in conversational analysis is back in the seventies.
And in reading your book,
conversational analysis,
you bring this tape recorder with you to your Thanksgiving dinner conversation and in reading through the methods,
part of the book you talk about.
Well,
we ran out of tape and I've just,
I had to smile because there's so much that's changed now,
even just in thinking about taping,

(08:48):
like here we are on Zoom,
right?
Taping this conversation and we could go on and on and on and on and tape all day if we really wanted to.
So those limitations that you had in recording the conversation don't exist in the same way now.
So I'm,
I'm curious,
could you dig into a little bit more of the technical aspects of conversational analysis?
There's notation that you use in your book.

(09:09):
And I'm also really interested given the duration of your career,
if you could talk about how technology or methodology has changed and how that has affected how we do conversation analysis.
Today,
I have to start by clarifying something that will be extremely important to people in my field and probably won't make any difference to the lay person.

(09:34):
The kind of linguistics I do is not actually called conversation analysis.
That is a different discipline that's done by people trained in the field of sociology.
And it's a particular kind of analysis of conversation.
What I do is called interactional sociolinguistics.
So I um yeah,
I'm on the faculty at Georgetown.

(09:55):
I'm in a concentration called sociolinguistics.
Interactional sociolinguistics actually grew out of the field of anthropology.
So John Gers,
who was my professor,
although his,
his degree is linguistics,
he was in anthropology department.
Again,
not gonna make much difference to anybody outside,
but I have to be very clear for anyone listening who happens to know the field.

(10:17):
So my book,
that first book about the uh Thanksgiving Dinner Conversation was called conversational style.
And that's,
that's the moniker for the kind of stuff I do and what I'm interested in,
in some ways nothing has changed or basic method is recording conversation,
transcribing it and taking it apart.

(10:39):
Looking at what the specific things were in terms of language and the effects that it had a big difference.
However,
is that now video recording is very simple back then,
there was not a lot of video recording,
but if one did,
it was a big deal,
you came in with boom mics and uh that you,

(11:02):
you know,
held it over people's head and you know,
you were there.
But so was your crew.
So the field that I was specifically and we preferred audio because we recorded conversations or interaction that happened naturally.
That's another key phrase naturally occurring.
Now,

(11:22):
that's very um controversial in the field of,
well,
any,
any field of study,
one could argue if you are part of the conversation,
how can you be objective and study it?
And that is an issue.
What we would say is nobody can be objective.

(11:43):
In fact,
it may be better to acknowledge.
You can't be objective and have disciplined subjectivity if you come in as a stranger and set it up and tell people to talk to each other.
Ok.
Great.
You'll be objective but they're not gonna be natural.
So if you want naturally occurring conversation and you wanna record it,

(12:08):
if you would have been there anyway,
you have an ongoing relationship and an ongoing reason to be there.
The chance is you're going to get a natural conversation,
go way up.
Now,
aren't people aware of being recorded,
doesn't that change it?
And we do talk about that.
We call the observers paradox.
You want to observe what goes on when you're not there,

(12:30):
but when you're there and you're observing it changes what goes on the Schrodinger's cat,
right.
Yeah,
that is,
that is,
again,
it is an issue.
We have to take it into account.
But there is pretty much evidence that if it's a group of people that would be there anyway,
that know each other that interact naturally interact frequently,

(12:50):
they tend to forget about the recorder.
And now especially you don't even have to see the recording equipment.
It is a very big deal to us all to say you don't record people without their permission.
You don't do it secretly.
But it certainly is easy to do secretly,
which it was not.
Then I had a small,

(13:12):
at the point at that time,
it was an extremely small thought to be extremely small little tape recorder.
I guess it was about six inches,
six or eight inches long and maybe four inches wide.
And I put it on the table and some of the discussion was about the recorder on the table.
In fact,
my,
my colleague,
Cynthia Gordon does a similar kind of work and she's written a paper about discussions about the recording equipment.

(13:38):
That's part of the conversation that we record.
One thing that has changed enormously is transcription.
That's exactly what it's just gonna add.
I need a 2.5 hour conversation.
The 1st 2.5 months was just transcribing.
It took me 2.5 months,
full time.
That's all I did from morning till night to transcribe because I wanted to get everything.

(14:03):
So I would play it over and over.
I was timing pauses with a stopwatch because length of pause was significant in my analysis.
Well,
we now have various programs that will automatically transcribe.
Now,
you probably wanna go back and make sure it's accurate and put in additions that maybe it didn't pick up interested in intonation patterns,

(14:27):
for example,
but the,
the length of pauses can be automatically measured,
don't need to stopwatch.
So that's a huge difference.
So I guess with that and we're going to get into this in a bit.
I is this idea of overlapping.
Does the technology also allow you to catalog the overlaps,

(14:47):
et cetera in the conversation or is that something you need to go back and uh and notate?
That is a great question.
Um I still do it by hand.
So I don't know what it's like for the,
for that equipment,
some conversations will have more overlap.
That is more than one voice going at the same time than others.
And it's gonna be my guess is it would be impossible for the automatic transcription program to know what I did was in my transcription.

(15:17):
I would s uh separate into two columns and going on at the same time.
So they were side by side.
But as soon as you're writing it down,
you're interpreting,
this is another aspect of it.
It's very interesting.
As soon as you're transcribing,
you're making decisions.
So if two people talk at once,
who kind of has the,

(15:37):
who,
who has the floor and who's responding,
and it tends to,
we tend to interpret by which one we see first.
The transcription is kind of like a play lines of dialogue,
the voice that you put on the first line sounds like.
Well,
that's that person's turn and the second person to speak was either interrupting or overlapping,

(16:01):
but that's an interpretation.
I'm,
I'm in a,
the local theater group and doing sound.
Um And one of the things we talk about is how do you learn the lines in such a way that it feels natural,
both speaking them.
But listening and a big challenge is the spaces between the line and the next line.
And when you're looking at a script,
they don't necessarily indicate when you're supposed to overlap or not overlap.

(16:26):
And that comes in,
I think with the training of the actors,
but also the comfort level and style of the actors themselves and thinking about how you want,
how you want to have this dialogue continue.
You know,
you're making me think,
isn't it gonna be totally different if your theater group is Wisconsin,
right?
Versus Brooklyn,
right?

(16:47):
And Brooklyn is gonna be especially complicated because a lot of people who live in Brooklyn grew up in Wisconsin.
I think that must be a challenge for them in their daily lives,
right?
As well.
In fact,
I'll just throw,
I have anecdotes to illustrate just about everything.
But as an example,
um somebody I once talked to I think was from Texas and in Texas was considered actually quite talkative and then got to New York City where they had a very hard time getting the floor and people were making interpretations about their personality.

(17:25):
You're gonna have to be more self assertive,
you need to be more confident and it was really just this,
this little matter of finding the right moment because you're waiting for a longer pause than then is going to,
it's going to be evident in that group of people.

(17:46):
Yeah.
So one of the things you say in,
uh you just don't understand.
So I,
I read this whole book,
I love the book.
I reread it and one of the quotes was if you will indulge me,
we all want above all to be heard.
So I think this pertains to the,
the person from Texas.
We want to be heard,
but not merely to be heard,
we want to be understood and not just heard what we think we are saying,

(18:07):
but for what we know we meant.
When you talk about conversational style,
you've talked about the different latencies of speech like a Wisconsin person.
I think we talk fast,
right?
And I always tells me I talk too fast and we talk fast because it's cold here and you gotta get the words out before your mouth freezes in the winter time.

(18:28):
So we're fast but we're not as fast as somebody from Brooklyn.
And we're certainly faster than somebody,
most people from Texas.
So when we talk about conversational,
so can you talk a bit about that difference for what we think we're saying and what we know we meant and what the other person is there listening to us I wanna first point out speed is not one thing.

(18:51):
So there's how quickly you talk within the sentence.
How fast are the sentence?
How fast are the words on together?
And then there's inter turn,
pause.
How long do you wait before you figure the other person's done?
Well,
how long do you feel?
You should wait before you think you've given everybody else a chance to talk and they're not talking.

(19:12):
So I'll just keep going.
It really comes down to a concept of what conversation is.
So much of what we're doing is just automatic.
So it isn't only a matter of what do I mean,
when I'm saying what I'm saying now,
but what am I working up toward?

(19:34):
And what am I building on?
So I'll give a couple of examples of gender related differences though,
the same things could occur and it's not gender.
This is from my book talking from 9 to 5,
which is about workplace.
So manager felt that she had told a subordinate to rewrite a report and he gives her the revision,

(19:57):
but he hadn't made the changes that she asked him to make.
So they have a conversation and he said,
but you told me it was fine the way it was and they traced it to the fact that she had begun by telling him everything good about it.
Ah,
and he took what came in the beginning as the main point.

(20:18):
So when she then said,
what she wanted changed.
He heard as an afterthought and there are many cultural differences that way too.
Um There are some cultures and I maybe dialects of India,
but I may be wrong about that where you get louder just before your main point,
it's kind of setting the stage and then you say the main point a little more quietly where English speakers,

(20:42):
for the most part in English is all over the world.
And in fact,
the speakers in India are probably native English speakers too,
but many Americans would get louder at the main point.
So you're hearing the words,
you're interpreting the words accurately,
but you're not understanding the flow of thought and how we're setting that up.

(21:03):
So that was the case in the example that I gave that you're gonna make a decision by starting vague and working your way in or starting specific and assuming anyone doesn't like it,
they'll object and then you work your way out,
right?
So it's much more than just what did my words mean?
I sometimes use the metaphor of a seesaw.

(21:26):
So this is an example again from the book,
talking from 9 to 5,
the workplace.
But also I had a training video made based on the book about the workplace.
And this was something they captured on videotape.
So this was a recording in Apr firm in Minneapolis and a woman is,
is talking to the art director.

(21:47):
She's the manager of the pr firm.
And she says,
do you think you get that done today?
So we could send that out to them?
And he says no.
And the reason it's so funny,
not just that he said no,
but the balance,
the number of words,
if she's gonna say,
do you think you can get that done today?

(22:08):
So you can send that?
He should say I'd like to help you out.
But we're kind of backed up today that would balance right?
And that's,
that's where the uh the seesaw metaphor comes in.
So use it on your side,
you trust the other person to do their side.
If they get off,
you go plopping to the ground.
But it isn't something you did.
It's because they didn't do their part.

(22:29):
And there's so many examples of that just,
and when you say that it just really struck a bell with me and thinking about some of the conversations I have with people where I'm like,
wait a second where and it's exactly that seesaw.
That's such a wonderful metaphor.
I'm particularly interested these days in apologies.
And there's a wonderful example of that.

(22:50):
And again,
it's tends to be often women compared to men,
but it doesn't have to be at all uh for some of us to apologize.
Apology is a two part ritual.
I apologize for a,
you apologize for b so if you're not apologizing,
the way I can get you to apologize is doing part one.
So I might say sorry,

(23:12):
say again if let's say you're the manager,
I was,
I missed you at the meeting.
If I didn't remind you of it,
I'm I'm sorry,
but we really would have been important for you to be there expecting the other person to say you did tell me,
but I'm sorry,
you know,
something came up if the other person says,
yeah,
make sure you remind me next time.
You wonder why did I apologize for something?

(23:34):
I know I was not at fault for uh because so much of what we say is ritual.
It's how we are used to getting to the point.
But if the other person has a different system or just decides to blow us off,
you talk a lot about cross cultural communication,

(23:55):
not just men and women,
but you have many examples from Greece,
India,
uh Native Americans is,
is the different expectations that we have about what conversation is and,
and what your responsibility as a participant in a conversation is with respect to yourself and the other person in that conversation,

(24:15):
you're making me think of an example.
A colleague of mine,
Ron Scotland and his wife,
uh Suzanne Scotland.
They did work among Athabaskans in Alaska.
And one of the things they observed is that among Athabaskans and this is true for at,
at Baskins in the lower 48 as well.
Patchy,
for example,
Navajo,

(24:36):
you don't talk to strangers and they were told when you are with people,
you don't really know,
you just,
you just spend some time with them without talking.
And then when you know each other,
you start talking for many of us below 48 you get to know each other by talking,
right?
So it's a total impasse.

(24:58):
I think I'm gonna get to know you by talking.
You think I shouldn't talk until I know you and the stereotypes on both sides can be seen as growing out of that.
So,
among the Athabaskans,
white people are so hypocritical,
they act like your friends when they're not.
And then the stereotype of the stony faced Indian who isn't talking to you because in that context,

(25:22):
it's not appropriate yet.
And,
and that's why all of these differences and yeah,
cross cultural differences is one of my uh major focuses of my research.
The reason it's significant goes way beyond you didn't understand me.
It's how you evaluate me.
Everything we say is not just to communicate content,

(25:47):
it's to communicate who we are and who we think you are and how we think our relationship is developing or what we think the relationship is.
And that's where it gets its turns out,
that's where it's so I don't think it's an exaggeration to say tragic,

(26:09):
hm,
cultural stereotypes,
the swiftness with which people judge each other negatively.
It's not that nobody ever deserved a negative judgment.
It's just that it isn't always as negative as we think if it's a style of difference.

(26:35):
Yeah.
So what you've mentioned both in this conversation and in your writing is this idea and this comes up in so many other,
you know,
different aspects of linguistics is like when we learn language and as you said,
it becomes a habit,
these,
these ways that we communicate with each other.
So there's this habitual way and ritualistic way that we enter into conversation with others.

(27:00):
And at the same time,
if it is a habit,
then how does one change?
If it's more automatic,
how does one change?
And on top of that,
there are these,
it just said there's stereotypes,
but within a stereotype,
there's also an implied power imbalance or power balance.
So who's supposed to change,

(27:21):
who is supposed to enter a conversation asking questions about the rules of the conversation?
How,
how do we do this in a way that is both respectful but doesn't also yield power when we shouldn't be doing that?
The first question is an important one,
can we change our styles somewhat if we want to,

(27:45):
if there's a slight difference in how long a pause is normal between turns,
the one expecting the shorter pause is gonna start talking before the other one has found that appropriate amount of pause.
You could train yourself to count to seven after you think the other person has nothing to say or count to something.

(28:07):
Give them more time.
You can train yourself to begin speaking more quickly so that you can get the floor.
But it's more complicated than that because talking in a certain way is in our view being a,
a certain kind of person.
So you may not want to be the kind of person who would start talking while somebody else is talking.

(28:30):
Yes,
we can adapt our styles,
but we can only do it to an extent because our antenna are off.
This is such a finely tuned system.
We've been doing it our whole lives.
You don't stop every time you're gonna say something and say,
gee how much pause has there been here?
It's automatic and you don't have the same antenna antenna won't be,

(28:53):
won't be sensitive enough.
It's not unusual for,
let's say it's a group of people,
maybe they work together and the ones who are expecting the longer pause are having trouble getting the floor and they see that the people expecting shorter pause or are talking along maybe or grabbing the floor from your point of view.
So you're gonna do the same thing.

(29:14):
But conversational style where you can talk along,
you don't jump in anywhere.
It may sound to the person who doesn't share that style that you're jumping in anywhere but we're not there.
You,
there,
there's a whole array of cues that you're picking up the intonation pattern,
the rhythm where they are in the story?

(29:36):
Are they beginning to repeat themselves or are they beginning to is it just start of something.
And so the person who says I'm gonna do that too won't have those antenna and may be doing it at the wrong time.
So it's complicated.
But something that always amuses me.
Most of the time when people ask me,
can someone change their style?

(29:57):
They're hoping that their spouse will change their style.
They're not thinking,
can I change mind what work is there?
And I'm,
I'm thinking about a lot of the diversity,
equity and inclusion work on,
you know,
how can we can we,
how should we balance conversation in a way that is more thoughtfully inclusive,

(30:23):
right?
How do we do that?
I mean,
what are the clues you have from your work that can provide some insights into,
into what we can do as we enter a group to try to,
I don't know,
understand the rules,
reflect on the rules.
Something the most important.
First step is to have a sense of what parameters might differ.

(30:46):
What are the kinds of things that may be going on?
For example,
one of the parameters would be,
when do you start talking?
You don't talk right away to somebody that you don't know.
So observation,
spend a little time just standing back and seeing how people in that community are doing it.
Another is trying different things and see how it works and,

(31:07):
and meta communicate m eta meta communicate that is talk about the communication.
So you say in words,
I think we have some differences here and if you know about the concept,
conversational style and maybe even have read something about it.
So I have my little book called,
that's not what I meant.

(31:28):
Just lays out a lot of this would be one place to start,
but maybe some short articles.
You have a starting place.
There are these differences.
I'm not sure what your style is.
You probably aren't too sure of mine.
Let's start by assuming good intentions on each other's parts.
And if either of us catches the other doing something that rubs us the wrong way,

(31:52):
maybe we can push pause to use a computer metaphor and talk about it.
We just happened to uh Yeah,
I think that that presupposes there's a level of trust and respect with the people in the conversation to get there.
But II,
I love that as the starting point,
the,
the idea of meta communication so that you are almost self analyzing the conversation as it's going on.

(32:18):
And like you say,
pushing pause and saying,
hey,
I feel something doesn't feel quite right here.
Let's talk about it before it gets ugly or not.
One of the things you mentioned is this idea of AAA good conversation.
I'm using air quotes here or a good conversation.

(32:39):
You can almost set up a metronome in a way,
a good conversation is something that follows a,
a particular kind of rhythm and I can definitely attach to feeling some conversations you're in where there's this wonderful rhythm and,
and as you mentioned,
you know,
people can jump in and it's like there's a certain time when all of a sudden two people jump in because that's when the rhythm of the conversation kind of uh kind of flows into.

(33:04):
Oh,
now you have a bunch of people jumping in.
So,
so I really was interested in that.
At the same time,
I was reflecting on a another book I was reading recently by Jeremy Dank,
who's a pianist and he comments about how when you're taking piano lessons,
oh my God,
I spent so much of my life with this stupid metronome.
I hate the metronome,
but it's so important.

(33:25):
But he says,
you know,
anyone can set up a computer to play a piece using the metronome.
But when you listen to it,
it doesn't sound right that a part of the art of playing instrument is knowing when to lengthen or shorten something in,
in a piece.
And that's you adding your personality and also trying to intuit what the composer was trying to understand.

(33:51):
So I'm wondering if you can comment on that,
the difference there between a good conversation that seems to have this rhythm and this idea that for AAA piece of music to sound good,
it can't follow a metronome.
I wanna say first that I read Jeremy Dink's book and I think it's brilliant.
It's wonderful.
Isn't it?
I absolutely loved it.

(34:11):
My best friend is a pianist and I never really understood what he was up to until I read that book.
Um,
I also want to make clear that when I say a good conversation,
I don't mean it's a judgment I'm making.
I mean,
it's the experience of the people participating.
You feel that you've had a good conversation,

(34:32):
walk away feeling that was a great conversation and the idea of the metronome.
And let me say I got that and not my original idea.
Frederick Erickson,
anthropological edu,
education,
educational anthropologist is the person who has talked about that,
that you can put a,
a conversation to a metronome.

(34:53):
And he doesn't mean it literally.
Well,
sometimes he does actually mean it literally,
I've seen him play a video of a conversation and he's like the conductor because everything happens on the beat.
If people could see us.
Now,
when I'm emphasizing a word,
my hand is going down and I'm leaning forward,
we have all these body signals.

(35:15):
And so there is something literal about it,
but it means that the sense of rhythm and the sense of pacing and the sense of um it's like a dance.
It's like joining uh a line of dancers.
It doesn't mean every dancer is gonna do everything at exactly the same moment.
But there is such a thing as we know when the emphasis comes,

(35:39):
we know when the beat is,
we know when the bass is gonna hit that note.
So I wouldn't take it.
So literally that it would sound like Jeremy Dink thinks I'm telling him that he said that pianist should stick to Metro Metro.
It reminds me that there is a,
there's a sense of shared rhythm.

(35:59):
There's a sense that we're in this dance together.
We both know what this dance is and,
and when you're in cross cultural conversations,
you can't do that.
You don't know what the beat is.
You don't know where the main point is.
You don't know when the right time to come in is that,

(36:21):
that's what we're talking about.
And that's almost like taking dance lessons or,
or taking music lessons in an ensemble,
right?
And learning how to be with each other in that space.
But it also brings me back to your seesaw metaphor of if there is a rhythm and,
and somebody isn't participating in the rhythm,
your seesaw also falls apart.
So,
you know,
somebody jump up but you're not supposed to,

(36:42):
you talk a lot in conversational style about this uh difference in status and symmetrical connection.
So if somebody comes in having this style of,
of being involved or somebody comes in and I this is something I remember talking about with my kid.
This idea that,
you know,
some conversations,
they're just fun because you're talking and sharing information and it's personal and then other conversations are more like um a discussion where there's a point and you,

(37:09):
you get to the point and then it,
it's not really a conversation.
It's more this discussion.
You're getting a point of information across you,
talk a bit about this idea of status,
differing status in a conversation and symmetrical connection.
And I'm wondering if you can expand on that a bit.
I'm very glad that you asked that.
It's one of the most important themes of pretty much all the studies I've done and every one of us in every conversation is balancing these two needs.

(37:37):
We wanna be connected to each other,
but we don't wanna be overwhelmed.
We wanna,
we're asking how close or distant are we?
And do we wanna be,
we're asking who's up,
who's down?
They're both there all the time for everybody but one person may be focusing on one aspect and the other may be focusing on the other.
And I'll give you some quick short examples walking along campus with a female colleague,

(38:04):
an older guy colleague comes by.
It's a crisp fall day in the east.
And she said as a greeting.
Hi,
where's your coat?
And he said,
thanks mom because she's focusing on the connection.
Just saying something friendly.
He's focusing on the status difference.
Mothers ask their kids,

(38:25):
where's your coat?
They're both right?
And,
and this is one of the things that comes up over and over.
I think part of the reason we run into trouble is because if we think it only can be one.
And this came up a lot in my book about mothers and daughters,
which is called You're Wearing that.
And one of the themes that was constant throughout my interviews,

(38:47):
I think I interviewed almost 100 women about their mothers and daughters.
One of the biggest complaints that I heard from adult daughters about their mothers.
She's critical and one of the biggest complaints that I heard from mothers about grown daughters,
I can't open my mouth.
She takes everything's criticism.
Well,
each one is thinking it can only be one.

(39:10):
So daughter is thinking she pretends it's not criticism,
but she's obviously disingenuous.
Of course it is.
And the other is thinking,
I don't know,
what's the matter with her?
Why is she so sensitive?
It's so obvious.
I'm just trying to be helpful.
They're both there and I sometimes point out often not just mothers,

(39:30):
it's friends,
it's partners,
romantic partners,
you want the best for the other.
And so you see ways they could improve and you showing your connection,
your love,
your concern by giving advice point how they could do things better.
Well,
any suggestion for advice or improvement is criticism.

(39:55):
If you weren't doing something wrong,
you wouldn't need the advice with the help.
On the other hand,
someone who didn't care at all wouldn't be offering wouldn't be bothering to tell you.
So it is also connection and just realizing that it can be both to say the other person's right.

(40:16):
Doesn't mean you have to be wrong is a real breakthrough.
I have had so many mothers of adult daughters after reading the book telling me uh one my,
I was so moved by this woman said,
thank you for giving my daughter back to me.
She realized her daughter's point and started just biting her tongue.

(40:36):
Now,
if you think something is life or death,
of course,
you go ahead and say it.
But realizing that all these good intentions didn't mean you're not coming across as critical.
And then I think of a daughter who said,
thank you so much for the first time after reading your book,
I went to visit my mother and we didn't have any fights first time.

(40:57):
And I said,
well,
what's an example of what was different?
And she said,
well,
ok,
here's an example while I was visiting,
I went shopping,
I bought two pairs of socks,
one black,
one navy.
And the next day I was wearing a pair and my mother said,
are you sure you're not wearing one of each color?

(41:18):
And she said in the past,
I would have said mom,
I have a master's degree and you don't think I can match my socks.
And then she said,
she caught herself and she thought,
you know,
who else is gonna care about the color of my socks.
And,
and,
and that is often what people talk about as the,

(41:40):
what they what they treasure about a mother daughter relationship or any close relationship.
You know,
who else can I tell?
I got a good deal on toilet paper.
So it cares about the details that in itself since I sometimes use the term meta message,
the fact that you're saying it sends a message so that,

(42:00):
that just is true in so many contexts to realize it can be both a sign of connection and a sign of up who's up,
who's down.
And it's just which one you're focusing on.
My kids have gotten really good at this,
the meta analysis piece.
I do a lot of work with process and problem solving.

(42:21):
That's my job is solving problems.
And,
and so this last couple of weeks,
I've been deep with the start up and like all of these circular problems and I just get in the zone of problem solving.
And in the middle of this,
my son calls me and I was in problem solving mode and I caught myself in the middle of something and I'm like,
oh sweetie,
I'm really sorry,
I'm,
I'm in this mode of problem solving.

(42:42):
Do you want me to problem solve or do you want me to listen?
And my kids have also gotten good at reminding me,
mom just want you to listen.
So it's kind of coming back to that,
you know,
not necessarily what are the rules but what are those expectations we have of each other in this moment and why are you calling me?
It's not to solve a problem.
It's to,
you know,
share the price of toilet paper,
whatever it happens to be,

(43:03):
that's on my mind that I,
I just want to share with you.
So I really love it that and I don't know if this is kind of a generational thing,
at least with my kids and their friends that meta analysis of what's going on and kind of setting expectations near the beginning of the conversations of what it is.
They want to get out of it.
It's wonderful.

(43:35):
I'm gonna go to Steven Pinker,
another wonderful linguist.
He talks and you mentioned this a little before something.
This is the actual sounds.
When we're having a conversation,
the sounds are not the same as,
as language and our perception of language.
What you write is that much or even most meaning in conversation doesn't reside in the words that are spoken,

(43:56):
but in the person who is listening to them and the,
the meaning that they are bringing into that conversation based on their context and lived experience.
So you've talked about this,
the,
the likelihood that individuals will tend to interpret someone else's words as one or the other depends on the hero's own focus and concerns.
And clearly this is what you've been writing about in 9 to 5 in the mothers and daughters books,

(44:21):
et cetera.
So I'm just wondering,
I mean,
you,
you're full of anecdotes,
if you could just share another anecdote on this idea of that listeners context and how maybe we as speakers in a conversation can be paying attention to that,
you know,
and maybe how that shows up in conversational style or in the,
your analysis.
If you notice that somebody is noticing,

(44:44):
maybe that the listener isn't hearing things in the intended way.
It became especially significant in the books.
I was writing about family relationships,
but it's actually true in all conversations.
We don't take meaning from this conversation alone.
We take it from all the conversations we've had before.

(45:05):
And that means both how we experience people using words in the past,
how we ex experience words in the past and what we know about your conversational style.
What we know about you a quick example,
I was visiting my mother and she said,
um,

(45:26):
do you like your hair that long?
And I laughed and she asked why.
And I said,
you know,
women tell me so much that their mothers are critical of their hair.
And she said I wasn't criticizing.
I let it go.
And then later in the visit,
mom,
what do you think of my hair?
I think it's a little too long.
I knew that my mother tended to think my hair was too long.

(45:49):
I knew that before she said anything and that's often the case in family conversations.
So some people will say about their mothers in particular.
But the people too.
She doesn't have to say anything.
It's that look and I hear this and think of more than one African American person.
I was interviewing who,
who said that.

(46:10):
But I think it's true for everybody.
So some of it is what you know about that person and your ongoing relationship,
but words are underdetermined.
They could mean so many different things and as we all know there's intonation,
I'm interested in apologies.
There's sorry,

(46:31):
sorry,
sorry.
Oh,
sorry.
I,
I'm sorry.
I mean,
I could do this for 20 iterations and they're all different.
Uh It's,
and it's one word,
just one word being said in different ways.
So we're attuned to all of that and that's where we get meaning.

(46:52):
We don't just,
we don't walk around with a dictionary in our heads.
We walk around with a lifetime of experience using language and interpreting language.
And I think then that's a particularly difficult in dealing in family situations when we have so much meaning embedded in the person that you're conversing with.

(47:13):
And then on the other hand,
getting into conversations with people,
you don't know at all where there's so much guesswork involved in how are my words hitting here?
I want to get into the thing that this podcast is all about,
which is interruption.
And you done some marvelous work on interruption,
overlapping latching.

(47:34):
And I wanted to preface this with one of the reasons I'm really interested in this is,
I have a tendency to interrupt people.
And in general,
the interruption is when somebody is explaining an idea.
And I'm like,
oh,
that's really awesome.
And I try to add something onto the idea and a way to build it.
So it's like an enthusiastic interruption overlay.

(47:57):
And I have been told that that is a bad thing to do that.
It is rude and impolite and I find it really hard to wait until somebody's done because I feel like it's impolite not to jump in and show my enthusiasm about their idea and to build upon it.
And I'm expecting them to keep talking with me and jump in and have this really cool harmonizing kind of interaction.

(48:20):
So when I read your work,
it's like this value of like,
ah somebody out there in the world thinks it's OK to do this.
I mean,
I know it's not always OK to interrupt and that you need to give I get it.
But at the same time,
it's not always not OK to interrupt.
So I'm wondering if you could talk about how you define interruption,

(48:40):
how it's different from overlapping and matching kind of from that very technical point of view of conversational style.
The first point that Jimmy is crucial in this discussion overlap is a description more than one voice is going at once.
Interruption is an interpretation.

(49:02):
It's judgment.
It's saying why you talked along or why somebody talked along.
And so I really bristle when I hear people using interruption for something that is not intended to steal the floor.
An interruption cuts you off and takes over.
Now,
sometimes that may be ok,

(49:23):
maybe the person was done and they're o that's ok with them.
But it's an interpretation,
an overlap could be a way of trying to take the floor and it could be a way of showing engagement as you just described.
So I ended up talking about two types of overlap.

(49:44):
Co-operative overlap is the word that I devised for talking along to show engagement or some other participant.
Another term I sometimes use is participatory listenership.
You're listening,
but you're not listening.
As if you were incapable of speaking,
you're speaking to show and demonstrate,

(50:06):
you,
you're listening and,
and then the non cooper overlap would be,
would be the interruption.
A funny little side point.
I used that term in my academic writing.
I never used it in my writing for general audiences because I thought not good to use technical terms.
A couple of years ago,

(50:28):
somebody found my academic book,
conversational style uh and got so excited.
They made a tiktok and then it went on Instagram and it went viral.
It's the most viral anything I ever did when it was picked up by so many people of different cultural backgrounds.
So uh I had written an article in New York Jewish conversational style and it's actually not Jewish.

(50:51):
It's East European my family background is East European,
Jewish and my friends too,
from that Thanksgiving dinner.
And we were doing this talking along to show enthusiasm and it made it difficult for some of the Californians to hold the floor because they thought we were interrupting.
We weren't,
we didn't intend to,
sometimes the person will stop because they think you're taking the floor.

(51:17):
So who created the interruption?
The one who stopped,
they weren't supposed to stop.
That was supposed to encourage them to keep going.
So the initial Tik Tok was someone who said,
you know,
I'm such a relief to know there's a name for it.
Uh But it kind of really kind of upsets me that I keep getting told of being rude when I'm doing something that has a positive value in my culture.

(51:44):
And it was followed by all these other tiktoks or Instagram.
If you Google my name and Cooper overlapping,
you'll see that they'll come up,
you know,
one was my family is black and we do co-operative overlapping because that's our culture in other was my family is French and we do cooper of overlapping because it's our culture.

(52:05):
And um so it's,
it,
there are many parts of the world in many cultural groups where this is,
this is the norm but not the midwestern United States,
which is settled by the northern Europeans.
It's more a southern European.
So Italians,
Greeks,
East Europeans,

(52:25):
Poles,
Russians.
Uh and many of the Jewish immigrants were from Poland and Russia.
So it's that East European,
when I talked about this stuff on talk shows,
somebody would call in sometimes and say my partner and I are both from New York.
We're both Jewish,
but this is a problem.
My partner accuses me of interrupting and I said,

(52:46):
well,
is one of you East European,
Jewish and the other German Jewish.
And in every case,
that was,
that was the situation.
It's regional,
that's the important distinction.
Not every overlap is an interruption.
But then there's the ability that goes along with conversational style that I've observed.

(53:11):
And you know,
that I talk about,
I was again on the top show very,
very early on talking about this topic and somebody called in woman and she said,
you know,
I do that.
My husband's always accusing me of interrupting and,
and taking over and I don't know why I'm not,
you know,
he,
he can,
he can take the floor just as easy as I can.

(53:33):
And her husband in the background said you need a crowbar to get into your conversation.
And what I loved about it is that,
yeah,
from her point of view,
I think she said he's a big boy.
He could,
he could,
you know,
get it if he wants.
It's not about being a big boy.

(53:54):
It's about your experience in communicating that gives you abilities.
So if you have grown up with that or gotten used to it.
Sure you can,
you can get the floor if people aren't stopping you.
Just for one thing,
you,
you keep trying in the Thanksgiving dinner conversation.
I recorded one of the New York speakers.

(54:16):
I call it persistence.
Tried to say something.
Other people talked over him,
try again.
Other people talked over him.
Tried again seven times.
I counted seven times till he finally got the floor.
He didn't mind.
You know,
he's just saying,
is this the moment?
Is this the moment?
Is this the moment?
And then the moment came and he got the floor.

(54:39):
So I call that high involvement style.
I don't call it New York.
Am I just chasing high involvement style?
What it means is we always have to show we're involved and we always have to be considerate of other people.
So the high involvement style puts the emphasis on ways of speaking that demonstrate your involvement.

(55:01):
So you talk more,
you stand closer,
you talk louder,
you talk about more personal things and you have short pauses and you talk along to show enthusiastic engagement.
The high considerateness speaker really can't get the floor because they don't have that background of experience.
And so you,

(55:21):
we do really do have different abilities just like a person who tends to start a conversation vague and then get to what they want.
Really can't start a conversation by saying I want this,
they can't.
So uh it's so important to keep that in mind that different styles also means different abilities.

(55:46):
And that's why the interruption overlap is so significant because you can't have any of these other conversational style issues come up.
If you can't get the floor,
that's why it is so heartbreaking to hear people making these negative conclusions about each other because I can't get the floor.
You're not giving me a chance to speak because you can't get the floor.

(56:10):
You're not doing your part in this conversation.
Is it something about me or is it you just don't have any ideas?
We interpret each other's abilities and intentions and we don't think,
is there a conversational style going on here?
And then you get the cultural stereotypes,
you know,
the pushy New Yorker,

(56:31):
the aggressive New Yorker because it comes across that way to you.
I wanna reiterate something that you wrote.
This is a quote from you just didn't understand that changing our own style is hard because style is not just how you act but also who you feel yourself to be.

(56:51):
And I wanna put that out there.
I also want to ask a question about inclusiveness,
which you're getting to when we talk about when we talk about cross cultural communication,
do you think that and I'm going to use the vernacular word interruption?
But we can also use the specific term overlapping.

(57:12):
Do you think that it is possible to see overlapping as a route to harmony in speaking?
And I mean harmony in the musical sense,
not in the uh emotional sense that this is something that we could perhaps explore in conversation as a way to be inclusive,

(57:37):
that we could hear two things at once and give two things the floor at the same time.
And I'm wincing as I say this.
But I also,
I just have this hope that we can use this method of overlapping speech as a way of giving multiple people the floor at the same time or making space on the floor for multiple people at the same time as a way of being more inclusive in the way we speak.

(58:05):
I,
I'm wondering what you think about that as a concept.
I'm glad you're raising the issue of diversity inclusion.
This has to be step one.
Letting people in is not gonna have a good result.
If you simply expect them to come in and talk the way we do and behave the way we do like that guy,

(58:26):
you're a big boy,
you can get the floor like everybody else.
Well,
you can't,
if you don't allow for these style of differences,
it's gonna flop.
It has to be step one.
The question of what you're gonna specifically do about it in a specific context.
It's challenging,

(58:47):
but I sincerely believe it's just another level of mutual respect.
Realizing we,
we come from different backgrounds,
geographic,
ethnic,
regional class,
different personalities,
introvert,
extrovert all these different influences on our style and just starting out if we could start out with the assumption of good intentions and see whether that might pan out rather than starting out with the assumption of what's the matter with you.

(59:23):
And we're just gonna figure out what's the matter.
And if we at some point,
if the interaction is an ongoing war on relationships that are gonna be carried on over time,
reading something,
talking about it,
having a discussion group about this really is the second step,
shall we say?

(59:43):
If the first step is just realizing that there are these style differences,
something that's important to keep in mind.
It's very easy to see how someone who has what I call high considerateness style is going to find the high involvement style offensive.
It's very easy to see that if I need a longer pause and you need a shorter pause and you're doing all the talking,

(01:00:07):
I might resent that it's a little harder to get one's head around the fact that it's equally offensive on the other side.
Uh And I think I was once talking to someone who was from New York and had that background and I was trying to explain this the other style.
And I said,
you know,
we all have to focus on considerateness.

(01:00:28):
We all have to focus on involvement and it's just where we put the emphasis.
And at one point she said,
but all that high considerateness is so offensive and it can be equally offensive.
I think you said a little bit about this yourself,
aren't you listening?
Don't you care about me?

(01:00:48):
Uh And there are so many iterations of that we could talk about.
So the overall point I hope we can all keep in mind is start from a point of assuming good intentions.
It's a nicer world to live in.
If you think more people have good intentions.

(01:01:09):
I'm not saying everybody always does.
You don't need me to tell you.
Sometimes people don't have good intentions but sometimes you'll think they don't and that might not be the case.
And that's,
that's the news.
That's why I think this kind of work is important.
Just understanding what conversational style is and how it works is a really important first step.

(01:01:33):
Yeah.
And I think it's the conversational style exists.
I think that's the even like that.
Maybe it's the prest step that there are styles that we bring in.
There are ways that of our being that is,
you know,
how we express ourselves as part of,
as I said,
as you said,
how we feel ourselves to be.
And if we come into these conversations,
as you said,
with a,
a feeling of mutual respect and expectation of good intentions,

(01:01:57):
I think we'll get to a place where we can actually engage in that meta communication to understand each other better,
to just realize that when you're thinking this is the kind of person you are you're rude,
you're intrusive.
You're interrogating me that we're judging a way of speaking.
Step back and ask what was the way of speaking?

(01:02:19):
That drew me to that conclusion?
Could that way of speaking mean something else?
And that's a very hard step to make because we've spent our lives learning.
This is the way we interpret people and if to say,
uh oh all my antenna for interpreting people could be off that.
That's pretty scary.

(01:02:41):
So,
thank you.
Every time I engage with your work I learn and it's just been an absolute pleasure being able to talk to you in person and go through these ideas.
So,
thank you so much time today and I'm looking forward to sharing this conversation with other people as well.
Thank you for joining us for more about we interrupt.

(01:03:03):
Please see our website at www dot we interrupt this.com for show notes,
links,
credits and other episodes.
Contact me on Twitter at hack yak to recommend topics or speakers for the series.
This podcast was produced on the traditional lands and waters of the Menominee Hawai in Ojibwe peoples.
I pay my respects to elders past and present and to emerging and future indigenous leaders.

(01:03:28):
It is a gift to be grounding and growing this work within these beautiful forests and waterways.
Thank you to Emma Levinson for her artwork featured on our website Segue Music is looking for a way out by Paolo Pavan licensed from of noise EV and intro.
Extra music is Bartok's melody with interruptions played by Alan Huckleberry for the University of Iowa piano pedagogy video recording project.

(01:03:52):
The podcast image is a public domain CC ZERO image from raw pixel lunch at the restaurant for the rowers lunch by Pierre Auguste Renoir.