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November 10, 2005
Conversations
Over the past few days, I have been paying attention to my conversations with my roommate, who is from Long Island. Instead of trying to prolong my pauses, I tried to shorten them; otherwise I don't think I would get anything in! Through doing this, I realized that we had to talk over one another. For example, when she thought I was just about done talking, then she would start talking. But if I wasn't really done yet, I would have to speak up and talk over her enough so she would realize that my story was in fact not done yet.
I also had a class discussion in my history class today, which was a good way to see many different conversational styles. First of all, in this class, we set up ground rules that stated that we didn't have to raise our hands to speak, like in many classes. During the discussion I noticed that many people started to talk over one another, which I don't see as a good thing. I think that the people, like myself, who are used to "longer" pauses (or pauses at all!) don't really get the chance to talk. I am a big opponent of interruption, I absolutely hate being interrupted, and I therefore don't like interrupting other people. But those who just talk over one another don't really see "talking over" as interruption, although I do. Therefore, I really find it awkward to talk during these discussions because I can never really figure out when I can join the conversation, and it's really hard to force myself to "talk over" others in order to say what's on my mind.
-Jessica F.
Posted by lcisfaria at November 10, 2005 05:02 PM
Comments
Jessica-- I think its awesome that you realized that in order to adapt to these differences in dialect and communication styles, you may have to adapt your own speech. You may need to speak louder, or even interrupt the other person to get your point across. But, I think it's hard to acknowledge this fact, so until you learn to work with each other's speaking styles, you may need to be slightly "rude".
Posted by: Brenna at November 10, 2005 09:57 PM
Jessica, sometimes I feel the same way you do. I hate to interrupt people, but sometimes when I don't I find it very difficult to join in the conversation. I always want to wait for a "longer" pause before I say anything so that I don't interrupt anyone.
Posted by: Katie at November 13, 2005 11:37 AM