Some Thoughts On The Point Of Small Talk

A lot of people aren't crazy about making small talk. It's not only something that less social people deal with. Plenty of socially average or above average people aren't totally fond of it either. It gets a bad rap in a lot of conversational advice as well. People are encouraged to avoid small talk as much as possible and get to more meaty, interesting topics. It's one of those things that will never totally go away though, and weirdly, if you come to peace with just that fact and play along, it can all become easier.

When people use the term small talk, they can mean a few things. The most neutral definition is that small talk is light, casual conversation. Often though the phrase is used to refer more to things like:

Small talk usually pops up when we're talking to someone we're friendly with, but can't think of anything to say to right at that moment. This is commonly with people we've just met, coworkers, and acquaintances. Though it may also happen with a closer friend who you're catching up with.

Routine questions are a standard way to get a conversation going

So you're talking to someone at a party, or you've bumped into your coworker in the staff kitchen. You know you want to talk to each other, but something to talk about isn't jumping immediately to mind. Asking some standard questions gets the ball rolling. It's a flexible, easy-to-use conversational template.

There's a set of 'getting to know you' questions and a set of "How are you? What have you been up to?" ones. They're just a way to hopefully springboard into more interesting territory. In an ideal world we'd always have fascinating things to discuss with each other right off the bat, but we sometimes don't, and we often still want to speak people, so we have to fall back on uninspired questions to get things going.

Routine questions are a good way to restart a stalled conversation

If you're in the middle of talking to someone and the discussion hits a lull, you can always fall back on one of the usual questions. You won't win any points for originality, but hopefully it will re-ignite things. Again, you may not feel like the world's most sparkling conversationalist when you hit an awkward pause and have to resort to, "Seen any good movies lately?", but it's better than nothing.

Small talk is socializing for its own sake

Sometimes people just want to be social and talk to another person, even if they don't have any deep topics to bring up. So they just make mindless chit chat. What's important is that they're socializing and taking an interest in the other person. Saying something dull with good intentions is preferable to saying nothing. Some people who just read that will be thinking, "Yeah, duh", but as someone who wasn't naturally social growing up, it took me a while to figure this out. Before my attitude was lacking that human touch and was more, "If you don't have anything to say to someone, why talk to them?"

Standard chit chat can ease your nerves

When you first start talking to someone you can feel a little flustered, on the spot or anxious. Usually this is when you're meeting new people, but it may even happen if someone you know catches you by surprise and you're mind isn't in 'conversation mode'. Asking questions and making statements you've said a thousand times before puts your brain on autopilot so you don't have to grasp for things to say. I find that when I've been mildly anxious like this, it only takes me thirty seconds or so to collect myself and calm down. Routine conversation buys me that time.

Sometimes people just want to talk about light topics

If your complaint about small talk is that the topics are shallow, just realize that not every conversation is going to be really deep or fulfilling. There are times when people just want to talk about something mindless, or discuss some topic that seems fluffy because you personally don't really care about it. Sometimes we're in the mood to idly chat to someone about the news for a couple of minutes.

People aren't trying to bug you on purpose if their small talk annoys you

Making small talk can be painful. It can get old when you've explained what you did on the weekend to the fifth straight classmate. Sometimes you can get irritated and feel like they're purposefully trying to bug you. I have to remind myself that the people talking to me have good intentions. They're not out to get me. There's not a conspiracy between everyone to ask me the same questions over and over again. They're just being friendly and probably actually want to know how my holidays were or where I work.

If you don't feel like making small talk, do your part to move past it

If you find yourself making tedious small talk with someone, make sure you aren't keeping it going by giving one word answers or returning the same question you didn't like answering yourself a second ago. One thing to so is give detailed responses to any questions you're asked, to provide the other person with more 'hooks' they can potentially take to move onto more interesting subjects. Pay attention to what the other person says, so you can pick up on a tangent to take the discussion down yourself.

Often we're not so much opposed to small talk as the circumstances we're doing it under

If you're talking to someone you like, you're often more than happy to talk about how your day was or any other trivial topics. If you've met someone new who you're interested in, you really do want to know where they went to school, and you'll happily answer the same question about yourself. But if you're conversing with someone you don't want to talk to, and who you don't click with that well, then the same exchange feels irritating and forced. Even if you do hit on a commonality, you may not really care. It's all about the context.