Question for New Yorkers - Someone help me understand the “yeah yeah yeah” while someone is talking

[Anonymous]

As a form of agreement it seems but I’ve noticed a colleague from Brooklyn and a family member of my own who moved to Manhattan do this.

I notice when they do but never ask why then tonight I was watching a vlog where a woman just did it to her friend while discussing their hotel room and realized it’s not just the people I know who do this.

What reaction would you like me to respond with or should I just keep talking knowing you are doing this as a form of agreement?

[Anonymous]

It's not so much a form of agreement as much as acknowledgement of what was said

[Anonymous]

It’s not an all New Yorker behavior. Just those that are interrupters with no patience. They want to keep the conversation moving on their terms.

[Anonymous]

I had a horrible boss from New York who did that. I thought it was kind of dismissive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s not an all New Yorker behavior. Just those that are interrupters with no patience. They want to keep the conversation moving on their terms.

Sort of this. I'm signaling that I am listening and engaged, but also that I get where you are going with this and want you to keep moving along. I am most likely to do it with people who just keep talking until interrupted, rather than pausing for breath: if I listen silently, they are more likely to meander and overexplain.

[Anonymous]

“Get to the point”

[Anonymous]

As a New Yorker, I had to leave the area to realize that not everyone holds conversations - especially informal ones - with both parties kind of talking at the same time. We don’t have any trouble following along. So we find it really frustrating when other people need to say Every Darn Word in silence and then we can resume the conversation. Most sentences contain a ton of filler and the meaning is clear from the context. You call us interrupters and we think you’re conversation killers. So the “yeah yeah yeahs” are just.a way of saying “got it”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:“Get to the point”

Yes, this. Skip the detailed explanation which we already know and just tell us the last sentence of your paragraph or story.

[Anonymous]

Deborah Tannen offered the term "cooperative overlapper," distinct from interrupting.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interrupting-or-cooperative-overlapping_l_603e8ae9c5b601179ec0ff4e

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a New Yorker, I had to leave the area to realize that not everyone holds conversations - especially informal ones - with both parties kind of talking at the same time. We don’t have any trouble following along. So we find it really frustrating when other people need to say Every Darn Word in silence and then we can resume the conversation. Most sentences contain a ton of filler and the meaning is clear from the context. You call us interrupters and we think you’re conversation killers. So the “yeah yeah yeahs” are just.a way of saying “got it”.

This is honestly interesting.

[Anonymous]

They don't need the explanation. Point was received. Context matters for if it was dismissive vs acknowledgement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a New Yorker, I had to leave the area to realize that not everyone holds conversations - especially informal ones - with both parties kind of talking at the same time. We don’t have any trouble following along. So we find it really frustrating when other people need to say Every Darn Word in silence and then we can resume the conversation. Most sentences contain a ton of filler and the meaning is clear from the context. You call us interrupters and we think you’re conversation killers. So the “yeah yeah yeahs” are just.a way of saying “got it”.

This is a great explanation for why people say New Yorkers are rude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Deborah Tannen offered the term "cooperative overlapper," distinct from interrupting.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interrupting-or-cooperative-overlapping_l_603e8ae9c5b601179ec0ff4e

00:05 here. This is it exactly. It may also be because so many New Yorkers come from the cultures mentioned in the article. I didn’t meet a whole lot of WASPs growing up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Deborah Tannen offered the term "cooperative overlapper," distinct from interrupting.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interrupting-or-cooperative-overlapping_l_603e8ae9c5b601179ec0ff4e

00:05 here. This is it exactly. It may also be because so many New Yorkers come from the cultures mentioned in the article. I didn’t meet a whole lot of WASPs growing up.

I moved from New England and NYC to the Pacific Northwest and adapting to the different style of conversation was a huge struggle for me. I quickly realized that the expectation was full sentence, pause, wait, react to full sentence. It makes conversations very slow (to me) and also very hard to resolve. Add on top of that a culture that is very focused on consensus and I’ll admit that it was hard for me to adapt and I probably made some terrible first impressions. I do a version of code switching now when I sense a former East Coast person who does this “cooperative overlapping”. It happened recently on the kids’ soccer sideline. A native PNWer joined us and it felt like we were having a conversation in two languages and pausing to translate for her.

[Anonymous]

I do this and I am from Ohio. I remember someone from DC pointed out I said yeah too much and I said oh yeah what do you think about that? 😆