にむかって vs にむけて - when to use which?

I’ve been having trouble deciding when to use にむかって versus when to use にむけて during reviews. Looking at the example sentences I was unable to discern any general rule or pattern, and there was no further explanation on the grammar point page. So I consulted A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar, which has about 4 and a half pages on the topic of にむけて/むけた/にむかって (though most of that are examples).

In the book I found the following information:
にむけて/にむかって indicates the destination/direction of movement,
or target/direction/goal/purpose of an action. The following rules apply:

  1. When indicating destination/direction of human movement, you can use both にむけて and にむかって
  2. When indicating destination/direction of non-human movement, always use にむかって
  3. When indicating target/direction/goal/purpose of an action, always use にむけて

I went back to the example sentences here at Bunpro to see if they make sense with regard to these rules. It seems to me that some of the sentences don’t comply with the rules.
I’m not suggesting the example sentences are incorrect. I trust the people who put them there know their stuff. I’m just trying to understand the topic.

Namely it’s these sentences:
Sentence 5:
小学生に向かってなんでそんなに難しい言い方をするのだろう…。
Here the students are the target of 「言い方をする」i.e. they are being spoken to, and I believe speaking is an action, not movement. Yet にむかって is used, not にむけて.

Sentence 6:
放火が続いているが、消防署に向かって 文句を言っても仕方ない。
Again, the fire department is the target of 「 文句を言う」which is action, not movement. Again, にむかって is used, seemingly violating rule 3.

Sentences 9 and 11 seem to have the same problem.

These sentences make it seem like the target of speech should also be denoted with にむかって, same as with non-human movement, or at least both can be used as with human movement. But if such rule exists, it seems strange to me that the book didn’t mention it.

What am I missing?

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Could it have anything to do with transitivity of the origin verbs? 向かう is intransitive, whereas 向ける is transitive. I don’t know the grammar, so I’m just throwing that out there just in case.

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I’ve thought about that. But the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs is that transitive verbs have a direct object. In Japanese this would literally mean they are stuck to something using the を particle, which is not the case for either にむけて or にむかって. They both have a target, but they stick to it through the に particle. Furthermore, grammatically they both seem to do the exact same thing in exactly the same way, regardless of whether they came from a transitive or an intransitive verb.

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