Small Talk as Social Gesture

Abstract

The nature and extent of public conversations may be indicators of the cohesiveness of communities.Wle engage in small talk to initiate exchanges, pass time effortlessly, and maintain cordiality around acquaintances and strangers. Small talk is a set of messages like any other, except that it is highly ritualized and predictable. Once learned, small talk can become a resource that facilitates confident entrance into novel social encounters because there is great certainty associated with its cycle of exchanges. Is there a communication framework that will relate small talk to other sets of messages and direct attention to its usefulness as a social gesture? Principles of metacommrinication provide a promising framework.In a recent article, LaRossa ( 7 ) elaborated 4 propositions about metacommimication, based on the work of Bateson, Ruesch, and Watzlawick. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that every message has two kinds of meaning: ( a ) a report or comment on an event, and ( b ) a command about how the report is to be interpreted. The command aspect of the message contains a directive: how the listener is to regard the report, the speaker's attitude toward it and/or his/her attitude toward the listener. Since the command aspect is information about information it is referred to as metacommunication.At one level, small talk may be treated as metacommrinication. It is a comment about the sitriational and/or social relationship of its users. Siiperficial exOberlin, Ohio Jiidith Reinstein is on the faciilty of the Department of Commiinications, O h d i n College, 147

Snackomat - A Vending Machine To Create Positive Experiences By Bringing People In Contact And Initiating Small Talk In Waiting Situations

“…This means that it is not only the amount of conversation but also the content that matters for well-being. Small talk normally revolves around safe topics (Coupland 2003) and signalizes a positive view on the conversation partner (Beinstein 1975). As Mehl et al (2010) suggest it may be possible that happiness or well-being can be increased if people are provided with more possibilities to engage in conversations, especially in substantive conversations.…”

“…As Mehl et al (2010) suggest it may be possible that happiness or well-being can be increased if people are provided with more possibilities to engage in conversations, especially in substantive conversations. At the same time substantive conversation entails the risk of refusal, which is why conversation partners have to have confidence in each other (Beinstein 1975). Two questions that arise from these considerations are: Is small talk better than no talk?…”

“…This study shows, waiting situations can be created in a way that they are experienced positively. Future studies on technology for waiting situations can build on the theoretical background of this study as the need oriented user experience model (Hassenzahl 2008;Hassenzahl et al 2010;Diefenbach and Hassenzahl 2017), positive design (Desmet and Pohlmeyer 2013), AUM theory (Gudykunst and Ting-Toomey 1988;Gudykunst 1998;Duronto et al 2005), as well as small talk models (Beinstein 1975;Coupland 2003;Mehl et al 2010). For the design of Snackomat the following principles were developed and can be used for future studies: catching the attention of persons in a waiting situation, bring them together in front of a technology, offer small gifts just for a group of persons (the gifts should be different and preferably unknown to the persons), provide possibilities to have small talk with others by providing save topics, offer possibilities to interact with the other persons, and all persons in a waiting situation should always be free to participate in conversation and interaction with others and the technology or not.…”

On phatic technologies for creating and maintaining human relationships

“…(p. 148). Their perspective is supported by further research on small talk and gossip (e.g., [37][38][39]48]). …”

Alerters in Sudanese Arabic and English Requests

“…"Small talk" is defined as talking with the hearer about superficial topics that are not related to the goal of speech act to show that the speaker has an interest in the hearer and as an indicator of friendship (Brown & Levinson, 1987:117;Beinstein, 1975) or to engage in a peripheral mode of talk (Coupland, 2000). The study subjects used the strategy 11 times.…”