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Kaj_Sotala comments on Mitigating Social Awkwardness - Less Wrong
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Does anyone else have difficulty with this?
In group conversations, I'm frequently unable to talk at all because that pause seems to be too short for me to notice. To me, it seems like person B magically knows when person A is about to stop talking and takes up the conversation the second A stops, no pause in between. I've had to learn to be more aggressive and less afraid to interrupt people, otherwise it might take half an hour before I get anything said.
It's particularly annoying when I come up with a comment to something that's being said, but by the time I'm able to say anything the conversation has shifted to something else entirely. This happening once or twice wouldn't be an issue, but half a dozen times during the same conversation starts to get frustrating.
As I understand it, this is to some extent a cultural thing: different cultures have different expected latencies of verbal response... that is, different lengths of expected inter-utterance pauses.
I learned to speak in the Northeast United States, in a Hispanic Jewish household: my LVR was negative for most of my life * (that is, the rules I grew up with say it's OK to start talking a little bit before the other person has finished, which has its own set of difficulties), which I imagine is incredibly frustrating for folks who are actually waiting for a pause.
(* -- My LVR increased a fair bit after my stroke but is still pretty low.)
It's not just frustrating; to someone who is not used to such a norm, and who in practice ends up not having a chance to say their part in a group conversation that includes some people who are used to such a norm, those people may well seem rude.
Sure. To someone raised with one social convention, conflicting social conventions will often seem rude. I've similarly seen people with high LVRs seem rude to low-LVR communities ("Why doesn't he ever speak? Does he think he's too good for us? What, you need an engraved invitation to participate in a simple conversation?" and so forth).
But I suspect it's easier for a low-LVR person to introduce longer gaps in their speech (once they get over the idea that doing so is unacceptably rude) than for a high-LVR person to shorten the gaps in their speech (even once they get over the idea that doing so is unacceptably rude).
Somewhat relatedly: I do a fair amount of directing of amateur actors, and one thing I always have to work on explicitly is inter-utterance latency. Most people have an exaggerated notion of how long those intervals are in ordinary speech, and they consequently drag a bit when portraying speech on stage... the result sounds weirdly slow and kind of boring, even within the same speech community the actors are drawn from.
(Amusingly, the same actors often overly speed up their delivery within a line.)
From my own observation of conversations, it looks to me like a cooperative thing. Usually, A doesn't simply stop talking, having said her piece, after which B takes a turn. The handoff from A to B (or to C, or to D) is an interactive process involving both voice and body language extending for a perceptible interval (below one second) around the moment when one stopped and the other started. B does not know when A is going to stop. Neither does A. Instead, B has something to add and sees a juncture at which a handoff can happen. There are many places in a conversation where it could occur, but doesn't, or did, but might not have done.
I'd draw an analogy with improvisational dance or music, if I had experience of those -- maybe someone who has could comment. Or perhaps friendly sparring in martial arts. Or sex.
ETA: Which is why it can be a mistake to wait until A has "finished". Depending on A's conversational style and the subject matter, "finishing" may simply be the wrong concept to apply. In a one to one conversation it may seem to you like you can't get a word in edgeways, while A is wondering why you aren't saying anything and she's having to do all the work.
I believe one of the greatest benefits of interactive conversation is ability to interrupt, so that less effort is spent on crafting words that don't help, and efficiency improves dramatically, allowing to communicate more novel ideas faster, to a point where some things get communicated that wouldn't at all otherwise. If you aren't allowed to interrupt, this benefit largely goes away.
(Another is in reducing trivial inconveniences that can otherwise prevent you from getting the ideas out, and here audio conversation trumps text chats.)
It sounds like by "interrupting" you mean "speaking when a line of reasoning has not been finished", whereas Kaj meant "speaking when there is no pause". It seems to me that the latter kind of interrupting only has the benefit that you say it does when the expected behavior is to speak for a long time without any pauses that could be used for the former kind of interrupting.
You might try to add nonverbal cues such as leaning forward or a slight hand gesture to draw attention to yourself when you have something to say, before the current conversational chunk is done. This will help warn others that you would like to speak. Watch other people in the conversation to see if you can identify other cues, since people probably are more receptive to cues that they use themselves.
I may be completely wrong, but this suggests the sort of conversation where the point is displaying your quick wits and facility with small talk, and keeping up with the flow is most of the point. Is this with one particular person, one particular social group or something that you find happens lots in many situations?
Happens lots in many situations.
Does booze help?
Interesting question. I'm so rarely in a group conversation situation involving drinking that I can't tell.
In that case it sounds like you need to be faster at keeping up with the flow and not worrying too much about your input. The display of social wit is itself the point of quite a lot of conversations, including ones that one would assume were about the content. As usual with humans, everything is tribal politics.
I tend to turn any conversation into a display of social wit. I don't feel comfortable around people until I know I can make them laugh. As for interfering with content, I hope not, but it's possible. Especially when I'm out of my depth.
I have problems when I'm the speaker. Perhaps I pause to much and am a bit of a passive type, as I have noticed I get cutoff a lot and don't get to finish my train of thought. And yes, having my "train" then derailed to something different is a bummer as I can't even get to the point after laying the preamble :)