Interrupting isn’t necessarily rude – it’s just ‘conversational overlapping’

Hey, you! Sorry to interrupt. I was wondering if you’d heard of a term to describe a particular conversational style. It might resonate with you as it did with me. “Co-operative overlapping” was coined by the American linguist Deborah Tannen as a rebrand of a much-maligned habit: interrupting. “Far from silencing,” Tannen has written of the practice, “it can be encouragement to keep going.”

I hadn’t heard of this concept until a new friend brought it to my attention. “I love how much interrupting you do,” he said, during a frenetic dialogue covering everything from local politics to recent camping trips.

At first, I was a little offended. As a child, my favourite book was a self-help tome called Making Friends. I read it so many times I thought I had internalised its key messages, which were to remember names, smile a lot and ask questions. I realised, with chagrin, that perhaps I had internalised that last point a little too much. I was constantly disrupting the flow of speech.

My queries about what interlocutors were eating, wearing or thinking at pivotal points in their story were unnecessary and rude! But then my friend explained Tannen’s research, and how conversational overlapping can actually be seen as a sign of engagement. If, that is, both parties are into it. I began to see how in other contexts – at work, for instance, with my boss, or with a more junior employee – my tendency to finish other people’s sentences was a less-endearing habit. But I also saw why my close friends are a pretty assertive bunch: strong swimmers, all, in a choppy sea of gambits and bon mots.

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According to research, and backed by vigorously unscientific anecdata, conversational overlapping is a matter of personality, not culture. As Tannen has written, the practice has been documented by anthropologists and linguists across many places, from Antigua (researchers call it “contrapuntal conversation”), to Samoa (“polyphonic talk”), to Japan (“sync talk”). Do Americans do it more than Australians? Undoubtedly – although how much of that is impatience, or simply faster talking, requires further study.

But even as conversational overlapping has been found across cultures, technology is surely affecting its evolution. Think of texting – a medium some of those chatty friends I mentioned have taken to with aplomb, presumably because no one is around to interrupt them. One friend has even taken to leaving voice message texts to encapsulate the voluminousness of her in-person speech. These texts are invariably about her house renovation, and perhaps the slight resentment I feel about listening to them stems from knowing I cannot interrupt her.

Conversational overlapping can be seen as a sign of engagement. If, that is, both parties are into it.

On the other side of the ledger, Zoom has been a challenge for those of us prone to sync talk. The default in most meetings is to sit on mute until you take centre stage for a soliloquy. Moreover, what can be charmingly baroque IRL – think of Antigua’s “contrapuntal conversation” – just sounds on Zoom as though you’re talking over someone.