Page 1 of 1 [ 4 posts ] 

StarTrekker
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 22 Apr 2012
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,088
Location: Starship Voyager, somewhere in the Delta quadrant

13 Mar 2014, 11:14 pm

I have been informed by several family members, and my only friend, that I'm apparently a "dictionary mouth" and have an overly formal, pedantic style of speech that others find irritating and condescending. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to practise toning it down and speaking "normally"? My biggest problem is that I don't know what's considered pedantic and what's normal; I never set out to be annoying or to sound like I'm smarter than everyone else, I just have access to these words, which I perceive to be within the range of an "average" person's speech capabilities, so I use them, later to be informed that I'm annoying. Has anyone else had experience with this?


_________________
"Survival is insufficient" - Seven of Nine
Diagnosed with ASD level 1 on the 10th of April, 2014
Rediagnosed with ASD level 2 on the 4th of May, 2019
Thanks to Olympiadis for my fantastic avatar!


1401b
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 May 2012
Age: 124
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,590

13 Mar 2014, 11:56 pm

Pedantic is showing off how smart you are by correcting details too fine to contribute to the point of the current discussion.

If I were to say, "I wonder how many times this pie pan would rotate if I rolled it across the living room floor."
If I spread my fingers across it and said, "OK, it's about 9 inches across, and pi is 3.14."
Pedantic is responding, "Actually pi equals 3.1415926."
Especially if you notice that you're a little bit proud of knowing that, then you're probably showing off and pissing off everybody else.
And how you accurately said "equals" rather than slumsville slang "is" even though you know perfectly well it's not "exactly equals."

Be generous to the poor saps, avoid rubbing their noses in the fact that you're so much smarter than them.
A big clue is to try to notice how accurate other people are bothering to be, did you notice I didn't even use a measuring tape, nor did I make certain the pan was fully circular, nor that the "measured edges" were the same height from the bottom of the pan?
All these things indicate the level of accuracy your group is interested in.

And we've not yet discussed the living room furniture, nor which way to roll it across, the way they approach this, is a clue also.


_________________
(14.01.b) cogito ergo sum confusus


luanqibazao
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 13 Jan 2014
Age: 59
Gender: Male
Posts: 754
Location: Last booth, Akston's Diner

14 Mar 2014, 12:45 am

I certainly did that in my twenties. Sometimes I would consciously and intentionally use long words and complex grammar, as a kind of compensation when I thought people might be thinking less of me due to my stuttering, stammering, and difficulty making eye contact. (Sort of saying, "Hey, I'm not actually ret*d.") But usually it was unconscious.

I think today my speech is much more fluent (unless I'm tired or stressed) and more informal when that's appropriate. Unfortunately I don't have any real advice, beyond 'listen to people and try to match their level of diction.' It's taken me years of practice to be able to engage strangers in casual conversation without coming across differently from what I'd intended.



Waterfalls
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Jun 2013
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,075

14 Mar 2014, 7:18 am

There is a cost to everything. The cost of my not sounding pedantic is that I sound like a child.

I taught myself to have my voice flow up and down, it's almost like you're singing. Listen to the music in the voice of someone you like who is well liked by others as they speak to someone else. That way you're focused on listening to the tone and melody and flow with no pressure to respond to the content. So if you want to try this, it would be with a conversation you are not part of. Even better if you are in another room and can't make out all the words or see the people.

The other thing you can do is think about what people want---to feel good, to feel important, to feel they matter and are liked and respected. Occasionally, someone will ask a question and they want an answer, certainly I only ask questions I want answered, but for most people, asking a question is small talk or a chance to express an opinion, and one sounds weird taking it as a literal search for information. A lot of questions are not this.

It's easier for me to try to bypass the issue of sounding pedantic and focus on what will not irritate people or make them feel I might be looking down on them. I do not make friends this way, so can't pretend to be an expert. But in terms of having people put up with me for short periods of time without too much complaining, it does help to act relaxed and interested in them, listen and say empathic understanding things in response to what they say. I am left feeling things are me working really hard a lot, but generally I try to stay away from too much complaining and listen to their complaints because it minimizes people's telling me I don't know how to have a conversation. Which I find pretty aversive.

I have no idea why I can't get away with complaining and need to listen with kindness to others' complaints, other than that perhaps it compensates some for speech that would otherwise bother people.

I hope you can use some of this to help your situation.