Women’s conversations also have a distinctive turn-taking structure—a style of talk that Coates likens to a musical jam session. “The defining characteristic of a . . . jam session,” she says, “is that the conversational floor is potentially open to all participants simultaneously.” In such conversations, you might hear overlapping talk, speakers repeating one another, or rephrasing each other’s words. Everyone is working together to construct meaning, and thus the one-speaker-at-a-time rule does not apply. “Simultaneous speech does not threaten comprehension,” Coates explains, “but on the
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