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.)
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.)