[Xmca-l] Re: Collaboration

[Lplarry]

Greg,
Is it reasonable to say that there are differing discourse patterns that are modulating what we are calling *interruptions*?

The next step of identifying these (actual?) patterns (ways of interrupting) as gendered may be going a step too far.
To back up, do modulating patterns (ways of interrupting) become *actualized* which we can explore as being *motivated?

Sent from my Windows 10 phone

From: Greg Mcverry
Sent: April 21, 2016 7:54 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Collaboration

Christopher,

The gendered practice of interruption is wide spread on the web. In
colloquial language the practice is referred to as "mansplaining."

Go to medium.com and search for "mansplaining" for an overview.

If anything the written and more so the networked nature of written
language has made it far worse.

I worry when we try to look for different discourse patterns among
something as socially constructed as gender. I would assume that the
discourses between any two cis-males would be just as different if we were
comparing them to cis-females as well.

On Thu, Apr 21, 2016, 12:20 AM Christopher Schuck <schuckthemonkey@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'll try to be brief :). One of the nice things about replying to a
> listserve is that we don't have to worry about interrupting each other's
> sentences - even if I might still worry about horning in on someone else's
> conversation prematurely, or going on too long!
>
> Written communication is often criticized for its limitations and
> face-to-face communication favorably regarded as more organic, but as this
> last thread illustrates the latter can be uniquely sensitive to certain
> kinds of oppressive cultural norms. There is maybe  a certain
> "psychological safety" in the written word even though it might detract
> from collaboration in other ways. I wonder to what degree these gender
> dynamics remain the same in written exchanges and to what degree they are
> modified, either for worse or better...
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2016 at 7:40 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','hshonerd@gmail.com');>> wrote:
>
> > Hi Annalisa,
> > I would also love to hear from the women.
> >
> > And you don’t ruin things for me at all. I am frankly very appreciative
> > you would respond to my post and with such good data, if you will. My
> > little summary of Tannen didn’t do justice to the diversity and
> complexity
> > of the many kinds of discourse. The book I cited is focused on gender
> and a
> > certain kind of discourse: conversation. Two other popular books of hers
> > focus on gender: You Just Don’t Understand Me: Men and Women in
> > Conversation (1990) and Talking From 9 to 5: How Women’s and Men’s
> > Conversational Styles Affect Who Gets Heard, Who Gets Credit and What
> Gets
> > Done at Work (1994). An even earlier book, That’s Not What I Meant: How
> > Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Your Relations with Others (1986),
> > gets into more broadly “cultural” differences in styles of engaging in
> > dialog.
> >
> > But even if Tannen sticks to day-to-day conversation among middle
> America,
> > I think your own experiences and the narratives of women in public
> > discourse that you cite are evidence that her analysis of conversational
> > style in this country informs us about political, academic and legal
> > discourse around the world. An irony from Tannen’s work is that men
> > complain that women interrupt more often, but the reality is to the
> > contrary: Men interrupt women much more often. Tannen found that women in
> > talking with one another tend not to interpret simultaneous talk as
> > interruptions, but as agreement, solidarity, she calls it. Men tend to
> > interpret simultaneous talk as an affront. One can talk here about
> > multi-tasking: Maybe men are just not as good as women at talking and
> > listening at the same time and that hurts their pride. Chromosomal? I
> doubt
> > it, but I am still constantly chagrined by my wife’s ability to talk and
> > listen at the same time. Hell, I would settle for just being a better
> > listener! That’s not easy for me!! On this chat some of it is simple
> > ignorance on my part about what is being talked about, academic
> preparation
> > if you will. But I am pretty sure some of it has to do with a tin ear
> and a
> > less-than-open heart. Still, got to work with what I’ve got.
> >
> > With respect,
> > Henry
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > On Apr 20, 2016, at 4:02 PM, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu
> > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','annalisa@unm.edu');>> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Henry,
> > >
> > > Hate to ruin things for you, but I must not fit in the general gendered
> > paradigm of interruptions. Or maybe I am not understanding you correctly?
> > >
> > > Being a woman who is frequently not allowed to speak to the end of my
> > sentences, which causes a situation where I must repeat myself –which
> > subsequently makes me appear as long-winded compared to if I'd just been
> > able to finish my sentence in the first place– I feel interruptions are
> > most always about power dynamics, as I almost always feel unheard when my
> > speech is interrupted. It is the exception that I feel interruptions make
> > me feel I am heard by my interlocutor(s), where as you say the
> conversation
> > is being moved along.
> > >
> > > There is also the pattern where people might allow me to speak to the
> > end of my sentence and then continue one as if I had said nothing, in
> that
> > case it is the shape of an interruption whereby I am made out to be the
> > unwelcome interrupter, and thus ignored.
> > >
> > > In both cases these are two sorts of speech censorship, which does not
> > contribute to a sense of psychological safety.
> > >
> > > I was listening to NPR yesterday and learned that in Iran there is an
> > expansion of the secret police monitoring whether or not women are
> wearing
> > their public hijab properly, and (bless them) Iranian women are coming
> > forward on Twitter having that network moment of not taking it anymore.
> One
> > woman who is a parliamentary journalist, was not allowed to ask her
> > questions because of criticisms of her hijab presentation. So here is a
> > case of interruption based upon appearance, rather than allowing her
> speech
> > to be spontaneously given and received.
> > >
> > > I remember thinking after I heard the news story, that women seem to
> > frequently have to resort to a "forced" flexibility, a sort of temporal
> > bricolage, to make their thoughts known, knowing there is constantly the
> > threat of interruption hanging like hijab around their heads.
> > >
> > > If this is the reason women are (considered) multi-taskers so be it,
> but
> > I don't think it's chromosomal, just a by-product of survival through an
> > imposed steeplechase of (his)tory.
> > >
> > > Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, says what it does because Woolf
> > claims a woman needs to find her true voice in a safe space in her
> control,
> > a place she where she can be left alone, to speak without the drone of
> > other people's voices being overlaid and imposed upon her.
> > >
> > > If such a social dynamic is something that a man also experiences (and
> > so I believe the dynamic need not be isolated to women only), then I
> would
> > say he would have an equal requirement to a safe space to connect to his
> > own inner speech. I'm sure though, this would occur differently, since
> the
> > social pressures are likely not the same, though there would be family
> > resemblances, as I imagine that censorship of speech has deep
> psychological
> > consequences for human beings in general.
> > >
> > > One point Woolf makes in AROOO, is that when a woman speaks from this
> > injury she is not considered legitimate, and this means she is not free
> to
> > the spontaneous thought required to be imaginative or innovative, because
> > her speech is in reference to constrained reaction rather than unfettered
> > creation.
> > >
> > > I would love to hear what women on this list think about that? To add
> or
> > augment? (Though men are welcome to say what they like also, of course...
> > without interruption).
> > >
> > > Kind regards,
> > >
> > > Annalisa
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>