Someone asked this on Quora: “I learn very quickly by asking questions. Is it acceptable to interrupt someone during a conversation to gain more clarity on a topic?” Which I relate to a lot.

Someone answered this: “Yes , it is very rude to do because maybe on a little further into conversation your question may be answered and if not then , make a mental note of it and as soon as you see an opening in the conversation - circle back to the point in the where your question fits in and ask it . Interupting someon while they are talking can cause that person to lose sight of they were want say and what thier point was going to be .”

But this doesn’t seem to always work for me, and I must say it depends on the person you’re talking to and the situation.

  1. Sometimes if someone misunderstands something you said or that has happened or gets a fact wrong, they can end up going on a pointless/misguided tangent in the conversation and even can start getting progressively angrier on their own without you even saying anything, whereas if you interrupt and clarify the misunderstanding that can help to calm them down in certain cases, and to course-correct the conversation to make it more productive and reasonable.
  2. Sometimes they never allow you a chance to speak at all, talk for ages on their own, and then simply exit the conversation before you would have any ability to respond to specific things they said earlier.
  3. If they say so many things you want to respond to, it can add up to a lot, and you may not be able to ever get through them if you can’t respond to them as they come up.
  4. Making a mental note is often impossible for me, I frequently forget and need to address something immediately in order to remember it, unless I can pause the conversation to make a physical or digital note (can’t focus on what they’re saying while writing it) which people would probably find even more rude either way.

I’ve also seen lots of debaters, journalists and interviewers interrupting people as their standard method or style of dialogue, and it seems to work for them (sometimes people get annoyed at them, sometimes they don’t and often do the same thing), so I don’t know.

I would appreciate if anyone has any literature on why it may be acceptable to interrupt sometimes or perhaps a recognised style of communication that allows this, as well as any speakers who defend this practice and debates about the topic itself.

Thanks

  • @twice_twotimesEnglish
    1•6 months ago

    If you’re in a one on one conversation with another person where the intention of both parties is for you to learn something from them, the idea that you should just sit and wait and hope is silly at best and actively detrimental at worst.

    You do want to avoid interrupting at awkward moments so you don’t make them forget what they’re saying or irritate them with a question they are going to answer in the next two words. But it’s pretty simple to avoid those (or more importantly, to demonstrate to the other person that you are INTENDING to avoid them, even if you make mistakes). Three big things:

    1. Pay attention to tone of voice, including speed and volume. People will usually slow down, soften their voice, and shift their pitch off neutral (raising or lowering) to sort of “open the floor” for constructive interruptions without outright stopping. That’s the ideal spot to jump in.
    2. Be practical about the content of what’s being said. If you have a question about one thing but you see that your partner is clearly moving on to a totally new thing - interrupt them. Even if you do have to be pretty abrupt with it, this is still a “constructive interruption” because it helps both speakers stay on the same page and have an efficient interaction.
    3. Backchannel your intentions. Someone else mentioned that backchanneling include minor interruptions — things like nodding, saying “oh wow,” “yeah totally” — that don’t actually take the floor away (the other person doesn’t have to stop talking to give you space). Another kind of backchanneling is using small soft vocal signals (“hmmm” “oh uh well…”) to give the other person the chance to stop and let you ask a question. You don’t force your way in; they can finish their thought but see that they shouldn’t move on yet. Aside from soft vocalizations, these kinds of cues also include laughter, facial expressions (puzzled, skeptical, surprised, etc), eye gaze (either suddenly looking away or suddenly looking right at the person), and gestures (tilting your head to one side, doing a “mouth shrug,”

    I study conversational gestures and backchannel a for a living, so I’ll add that my personal favorite tool here is a modified shrug. Tilt your head a little, extend your upturned hand or pointed finger out toward them (but like, softly and not at or near their face, just in neutral space), maybe raise one shoulder a little optionally, and just hold it there. They will read it as a request to metaphorically pass the turn to you the same way they’d pass you the salt.