An example of wasting time...?

There seems to be a lot of time invested in verbal examples.

Almost without exception every discussion I have with fellow analysts, users, managers, desgners, developers, testers, trainers and project managers involves the following pattern:
"I think this is the case and the reason is - well, suppose, for example..." and there follows an often lengthy, ususally contested (by someone else in the meeting) example of something to support the original statement.

The issue I have is that the example usually adds nothing but time: the meeting participants usually know the context of the example and understand the point being made that the example is supposed to support. Where this is not true and the example does aid eductation of meeting partcipants, fair enough. However, this is rare in my experience.

The net effect is to just add time to the meeting.

Why would people do this? The people I meet with are not stupid, and they are all aware of the time pressures, so why would they consume time with these (quite literally) pointless examples?

I have noticed that there are categories of people who don't tend to do this:
1. senior project sponsors will quite often simply lay down their requirements (or quite often solution and not requirements - but that is another issue)
2. true subject matter experts talking about the subject they are expert in
3. shy people (who just don't like talking!)

If these categories are correct, the profile of a typical example procastinator is middle management and below, not expert in the subject under dicsussuion who likes the sound of their own voice!

If this is true then it is in my interests to shut the examples down so that more progress can be made. I have the objective (reduce wasted time in meetings) and a requirement (shut down pointless examples): the question of the design of the solution now arises and - being a business analyst - I know I need to canvass experts in the 'technology' that can achieve this: interpersonal skills.

So anyone out there with a solution for my requirement (or an explanation of why my requirement won't contribute to achieving my objective), please do let me know!

Thanks!