Small talk

Small talk is an informal type of discourse that does not cover any functional topics of conversation or any transactions that need to be addressed.

[2] The phenomenon of small talk was initially studied in 1923[3] by Bronisław Malinowski in his essay "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages",[4] who coined the term "phatic communication" to describe it.

[7] Small talk is closely related to the need for people to maintain a positive face and feel approved of by those who are listening to them.

[10] In workplace situations, small talk tends to occur mostly between workers on the same level, but it can be used by managers as a way of developing the working relationships with the staff who report to them.

Bosses who ask their employees to work overtime may try to motivate them by using small talk to temporarily decrease their difference in status.

[11] The balance between functional conversation and small talk in the workplace depends on the context and is also influenced by the relative power of the two speakers.

In either case, someone initiating small talk will tend to choose a topic for which they can assume a shared background knowledge, to prevent the conversation from being too one-sided.

A study of small talk in situations that involve the chance meeting of strangers has been carried out by Klaus Schneider.

In functional conversations that address a particular topic, Grice's maxim of quantity suggests that responses should contain no more information than was explicitly asked for.

Schneider describes that subsequent moves may involve an acknowledgement such as "I see", a positive evaluation such as "That's nice", or what's called "idling behaviour", such as "Mmm", or "Really?".

In cultures or contexts that are status-oriented, such as China, Latin America and Japan,[19] small talk between new acquaintances may feature exchange of questions that enable social categorization of each other.

[20][21][22][23] In many European cultures it is common to discuss the weather, politics or the economy, although in some countries personal finance issues such as salary are considered taboo.