Testimonial smothering, ultimately, is the truncating of one’s own testimony in order to insure that the testimony contains only content for which one’s audience demonstrates testimonial competence….Three circumstances…routinely exist in instances of testimonial smothering…: 1) the content of the testimony must be unsafe and risky; 2) the audience must demonstrate testimonial incompetence with respect to the content of the testimony to the speaker; and 3) testimonial incompetence must follow from, or appear to follow from, pernicious ignorance.
