Someone asked this on Quora: "I learn very quickly by asking questions. Is it acceptable to interrupt someone during a conversation to gain more clarity on a topic?" Which I relate to a lot.
Someone answered this: "Yes , it is very rude to do because maybe on a little further into conversation your question may be answered and if not then , make a mental note of it and as soon as you see an opening in the conversation - circle back to the point in the where your question fits in and ask it . Interupting someon while they are talking can cause that person to lose sight of they were want say and what thier point was going to be ."
But this doesn't seem to always work for me, and I must say it depends on the person you're talking to and the situation.
- Sometimes if someone misunderstands something you said or that has happened or gets a fact wrong, they can end up going on a pointless/misguided tangent in the conversation and even can start getting progressively angrier on their own without you even saying anything, whereas if you interrupt and clarify the misunderstanding that can help to calm them down in certain cases, and to course-correct the conversation to make it more productive and reasonable.
- Sometimes they never allow you a chance to speak at all, talk for ages on their own, and then simply exit the conversation before you would have any ability to respond to specific things they said earlier.
- If they say so many things you want to respond to, it can add up to a lot, and you may not be able to ever get through them if you can't respond to them as they come up.
- Making a mental note is often impossible for me, I frequently forget and need to address something immediately in order to remember it, unless I can pause the conversation to make a physical or digital note (can't focus on what they're saying while writing it) which people would probably find even more rude either way.
I've also seen lots of debaters, journalists and interviewers interrupting people as their standard method or style of dialogue, and it seems to work for them (sometimes people get annoyed at them, sometimes they don't and often do the same thing), so I don't know.
I would appreciate if anyone has any literature on why it may be acceptable to interrupt sometimes or perhaps a recognised style of communication that allows this, as well as any speakers who defend this practice and debates about the topic itself.
Thanks
Just like most human interaction, it's situational and the rules to how to do it are very context based as well. There are proper ways, and acceptable reasons to interrupt in specific scenarios. In formal structured settings it leans on almost always inappropriate. On informal and intimate exchanges it's perfectly acceptable but rules to how, when, to whom and why are nuanced and unwritten. Every social group will have their own by laws as well. Observe any human gathering and you will notice them interrupting each other all the time. Ask those same people whether it's acceptable to interrupt others and they will naïvely mostly answer that it isn't. Thus is the nature of human communication.