People who refuse to clarify statements

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My pet peeve (my kids do this all the time):

My son: "a-b-c-d-e-f-g."

Me: "What do you mean by that?"

My son: "Just what I said! A-B-C-D-E-F-G!"

Me: "I didn't understand it the FIRST time you said it! What makes you think repeating it exactly as you said it the first time will help me understand it any better?"

Or...

I hear this: "Blah-blah-blah-blah-blah-blah, at the end of the movie he says, 'blah-blah-blah!' Isn't that the funniest thing you've ever heard?"

Me: "Wait, what? What are you talking about?"

My son: "At the end of the movie, he says, 'blah-blah-blah!"

Me: "And? What movie? What on earth was all that you said before that?"

My son: "Never-mind!"

Drives me freakin' NUTZ!

Hold on, that's a phrase?
I know the meaning of it but never knew it was a phrase.

Ah yes, lack of clarification makes my blood boil. I am a serial clarification-er. It's from being on WP. I know how easily some people get offended/misunderstand.

it's considered a phtase in Northern England, where the original gay drama series "Queer as Folk" was shot.




my mother does this often, she says XYZ, I ask for clarification, so she repeats Z.

My mother does the first one. Too many of my friends do the second. Drives me nuts.

It was a situation of the second variety that spawned this thread. What also pissed me off was that instead of just answering my question, the person kept adding more detail that didn't help instead of answering my question. And then he acted like I was the one being stubborn for not understanding him.

The first one doesn't bother me, but the second one is a huge pain.

I don't mind people assuming I misheard, because I do sometimes miss what they said, and because I often talk too quickly and too quietly, so I know others have to ask me to repeat what I'm saying.

Dropping out and not answering the questions and not clarifying bothers me a bunch though.

I'm often asking for clarification when talking to people because they do not speak with sufficient specificity for me to understand. It also frustrates me when they refuse to explain what they mean.

I am one of those people who refuse to clarify statements. I will explain once or maybe twice and that's it. I can't stand having to explain something over and over. It feels like the person is trying to take my brain apart into pieces and put it back together the wrong way.

How explicit are your explanations?

The people I'm talking about make super vague statements, and then refuse to say anything explicit or clear when I ask them to clarify, or they just ignore me and go on even though their additions just make me more confused.

They can range anywhere from extremely vague to very detailed. Mostly it depends on how I feel. If I'm tired or experiencing brain fog I won't go into much detail.

If I feel like the other person is just trying to pick a fight over something I said then I will be really vague because I don't want to give them more statements to argue about.

I have known people who would constantly try to nitpick the meaning of what I said, and then not believe my own explanations but instead try to tell me that I meant something other than what I said. I had one "friend" like that, who just about pushed me over the edge with it. It was genuinely traumatic for me, not just an annoyance or bother. I learned to be wary of people asking for explanations after I experienced that with her.

If I think there is a honest misunderstanding about something important I will try to set it straight. But if it's not important I would rather just let it go.

i don't like this either. or when they say you're just playing dumb and refuse to repeat themselves using different wording

on the other hand, i can see how it would be annoying having to keep reiterate yourself...

Having read the thread I'm on the side of the non-explainers. Conversational gestalt doesn't have a why. People say things because those are the things they needed to say. That's how people work. They say and do what they have to. There is no deeper reason, not one that's accessible to their own conscious reflection, never mind one that can be related to yours. Leave them be.

It's the first seven letters of the alphabet.

So it's better to simply be clueless about what people are saying all the time?

That strikes me as a profoundly pessimistic perspective. If "conversational gestalt" doesn't have a why, then it doesn't have a point either, and there's no reason to bother to talking to people.

Last edited by Verdandi on 05 Jan 2012, 8:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I just doubleclick translated 'gestalt' into German.

Verdandi: I usually know what people are saying. When I don't, I don't need to. If someone asked me to explain I would try to clarify, like dianthus, but if it was clear they lacked the framework to understand I would ignore them fairly quickly.

I would wonder why someone who couldn't understand was pestering me with questions.

I've found that people who tell me what I really meant or who try to dissect my neurology and thought processes from what I say are extremely invasive and unpleasant to be around. It's bullying, really. I don't understand the motivations for it, but I have no reason to want to be around it.

When I ask for clarifications it's simply because I don't understand.