At least dignity

According to some 15-year-old research, there is supposed to be a lot of interrupting going on in conversations between men and women.  I have certainly seen interruption before.  The research said that men interrupt women much more than women do men, and that the purpose of men's interrupting women was to show who was in control of the overall situation.  I don't doubt that a lot of interruption is going on,  but I am not in situations to see much of it.  Generally speaking, professionals at work don't interrupt, and if they do, they are polite enough to renege and allow the first party to continue talking.  In my particular case, my workplace is filled with turn-taking not interruption.  At home, the norm is turn-taking as well.

The particular study quoted quite often in cross-gender conversational literature contains recordings from men and women in the home environment.  The couples are young and childless, and they are all from a working class or middle class background.  I think the study needs to be redone.  Things sometimes change about language use, even from one generation to the next.  That's what the "S curve" graph is constructed around - language behavior that changed in a generation.  Or perhaps, my corner of the world isn't like others' corners.  My corner is the exception to the rule, but I have no other frame of reference.

I do think cross-gender conversation is difficult to navigate.  Actual contexts and expected or anticipated contexts are very different.  It's almost surprising that meaningful communication takes place at all.  But, control of a conversation, such as the purpose of interruption as a strategy in language behavior, is not and won't be part of my corner of the world.  Too many other variables can go wrong between men's ideas and women's ideas of conversation for interruption to be a problem.  Equality should be a given when two people talk.  And if not equality, at least dignity.