Small Talk

Justine Coupland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317876526
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Linguistique

This study presents a new perspective on small talk and its crucial role in everyday communication. The new approach presented here is supported by analyses of interactional data in specific settings - private and public, face-to-face and telephone talk. They vary from gossip at the family dinner table and intimate 'keeping in touch' phone conversations, to interpersonally-focused talk in institutional settings, such as the government office and the university research seminar. Drawing on a range of methodological approaches, including Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics, Interpersonal Communication and Conversation Analysis, the author elevates small talk to a new status, as functionally multifaceted, but central to social interaction as a whole.

Part
I
Locating small talk theoretically

1
Doing collegiality and keeping control at work: small talk in government departments¹

Janet Holmes

Introduction

Extract 1²

Context: Diana enters Sally's office at the beginning of the day to collect mail

1 D: good morning Sally lovely day

2 S: yes don't know what we're doing here we should be out in the sun

3 D: mm pity about the work really

4 S: how are your kids?

5 D: much better thank goodness any mail?

This short exchange raises a number of the issues which will be explored in this paper. It looks like a classic example of 'small talk' but we cannot be sure of its exact status, nor of the precise functions it is serving, without knowing a great deal more about the context in which it occurs. Diana's opening utterance constitutes a ritual greeting and a conventional reference to the weather - prototypical small talk fitting most analysts' definitions (see Schneider 1988). Sally's response, don't know what we're doing here we should be out in the sun, is not quite so conventional (though increasingly becoming so), and might well qualify as small talk between equals. The fact that Diana is Sally's boss is information which allows for an alternative reading. The response can be read as a (humorous) complaint: Sally is 'here', at least to some extent, because Diana, her manager, requires her to be, as Diana's reply acknowledges. From an equal, the response pity about the work really would be unambiguously interpreted as ironic and humorous; from a superior, there is a potentially 'repressive' reading (see Holmes 1998).

The enquiry about Diana's children is also open to alternative interpretations. Conventional enquiries about the addressee's health (e.g. how are you?) constitute canonical small talk (Coupland et al. 1992); an enquiry about the health of family members conveys a slightly higher level of interest. A ritual reply - one which confirmed the status of the enquiry as small talk - would typically have taken the form fine or great. Diana's reply provides more information: we infer that her children have been sick and that this has been inconvenient and/or a source of worry. A further possible inference from the fact that she immediately asks any mail is that she does not wish to discuss the matter (though, without a great deal of additional information, it is fruitless to speculate on possible reasons for this). As the superior she has the right to signal the end of the small talk phase of the interaction. The status of an exchange as small talk, and the variety of complex functions that such talk serves in everyday interaction in the workplace, are far from straightforward issues, as this chapter will demonstrate.

Most discussions of small talk begin from Malinowski's definition of'phatic communion' (1949: 216). But the concept has proved so valuable that it has developed to cover a wider range of discourse, and considerable attention has been paid to its complex functions (see Justine Coupland's Introduction to this volume). Coupland et al. note that Malinowski's discussion has given rise to a disparaging view of small talk as 'dissimulative', involving a 'fundamental indirectness' (1992: 209), a view which they challenge, noting the strategic advantages of discourse which avoids precise commitment to a particular position.

The negative perception of small talk as marginal or purposeless reflects to some extent the way it is often defined, explicitly or implicitly, as talk which is not concerned with information, which is not 'purposive' or task-oriented. Schneider (1988: 1), for example, quotes Schlieben-Lange's (1979: 98) distinction between 'instrumental' talk, focussed on information and intentions, and phatic or small talk which has a more sociable primary function.³ Yet, as the discussion of Extract 1 suggested, things are often more complicated. While the exchange clearly serves the social function of establishing initial contact between two co-workers on a particular day, it also serves a range of other functions, both affective and referential. It is not generally possible to parcel out meaning into neat packages of referential on the one hand and social or affective on the other. Talk is inherently multifunctional. Examining politeness strategies in women's and men's speech, the same point emerged; the structure of the model of interaction I adopted was designed to emphasise the fact that every interaction 'simultaneously expresses both prepositional content and affective meaning' (Holmes 1990: 254; see also Tracy 1991, Tracy and Coupland 1991, Holmes 1995).

A social constructionist framework highlights the dynamic implications of this observation in on-going interaction. In every social encounter we are unavoidably involved in maintaining and modifying the interpersonal relationship between ourselves and our addressee(s). Adopting this perspective, 'small talk' cannot be dismissed as a peripheral, marginal or minor discourse mode. Small talk is one means by which we negotiate interpersonal relationships, a crucial function of talk with significant implications for on-going and future interactions.

Although phatic communion has been die focus of considerable theoretical discussion, there has been relatively little research examining its relation to small talk and its occurrence in 'natural situations'. Noting this point, Coupland et al. (1992) suggest that the issue of 'how phatic and transactional priorities are merged in, for example, service encounters and institutional settings is one worth pursuing' (Coupland et al. 1992: 227). This paper draws on a range of examples from one particular institutional setting, namely, government departments. Following a brief description of the database and the methodology, the analysis examines die relationship between 'core business talk' i.e. highly focused, on-task talk in relation to the defined objectives of an interaction (see below) - and more social talk in the workplace. The distribution and structural positioning of small talk are then discussed, and the final section of the paper focuses on the various functions of 'small talk' in the business organisations examined.

Database and methodology

The database from which the extracts discussed in this paper have been drawn consists of 330 interactions involving 251 people (152 women and 99 men) in four government departments. 114 of the participants are New Zealand Pakeha, 111 are Maori, and 26 are from other ethnic groups, such as Samoan, Chinese or Thai.⁴ In total we recorded 121 hours of material. In each workplace a group of key personnel, representing a range of roles and levels within the organisation, recorded their everyday interactions with a variety of interlocutors across a range of work settings. A number of larger meetings in each workplace were also video-taped.⁵

The methodology developed for the project was designed to give participants maximum control over the data collection process. A group of volunteers from each workplace tape-recorded a range of their everyday work interactions over a period of about two weeks. Some kept a recorder and microphone on their desks, others carried the equipment round with them. All those involved provided information on their ethnic background, home language, age, etc., contextual information and permission for the data to be used for linguistic analysis. Throughout the process participants were free to edit and delete material as they wished. Even after they had completed recording and handed over the tapes, they could ask us to edit out material which they felt in retrospect they did not wish us to analyse. By handing over control of the recording process in this way, we developed an excellent research relationship with our workplace participants, based on mutual trust. Over a period of time, people increasingly ignored the recording equipment, and there are often comments at the end of interactions indicating people had forgotten about the tape recorder.⁶ Also over time the amount of material they deleted, or which they asked us to edit out, decreased dramatically. As a result, in return for guarantees of anonymity and confidentiality, our volunteers trusted us with a wide range of fascinating material.

One of the consequences of this methodology for the analysis of small talk is that observations about the distribution of small talk must be treated with some caution. Although we emphasised that we were interested in all types of talk in the workplace, including social talk and personal talk, it is clear that participants often assumed that we were most centrally interested in the talk they classified as 'work', i.e. transactional talk of various kinds (cf. also Willing 1992). Hence, especially in the early stages of the project, they sometimes did not turn on their recorders until what they considered the 'real' beginning of a meeting, and they stopped the tape when they considered they had reached the end of the meeting. Despite such patterns, we did collect a good deal of small talk in the workplace, but the inevitable limitations of the data represented in our sample should be borne in mind, especially in relation to comments on the distribution of small talk. On the other hand, we are not aware of any other extant corpus which has been collected with a greater possibility of including naturally occurring spontaneous small talk in the workplace.

The requirements of the methodology also generated regular 'off-task' or non-work related discussion. Especially on the first occasion someone was recorded, there was often talk about the project itself, as well as talk related to filling in a background information sheet. One interesting consequence of this was that over time the topic of the recording process developed into a legitimate topic of small talk. In other words, the recording process became so 'normal' for some participants that it was relegated to the periphery of their attention and reference to it became routinised and formulaic. Consequently, ritual references to the project came to function in the same way as ritualised greetings (cf. what Coupland et al. (1992: 217) call '"how are you?" (HAY) utterances').

Extract 2

Context: Ruth (manager) is talking to her personal assistant, Carol

1 R: [to tape recorder] conversation with Carol [laughs] come over here

2 I'm just gonna drive everyone insane with this tape recorder

3 /okay\

4 C: /oh well\ we'll let you off

5 right there's the phone number for you to call

6 R: okay ta

7 C: now look at these faxes these are- these are people whom we haven't

8 heard from [tut] so instead of bothering Mary to get her to sign

Ruth switches the tape recorder on as she approaches Carol's desk. She identifies the conversation for the purposes of the project as a conversation with Carol, and then comments on the fact that she is doing a lot of recording. This kind of comment occurs regularly in Ruth's recordings and other data collectors similarly comment in a formulaic way on the recording process on tape again, recording as usual and so on. Such comments become part of a perfunctory ritual, reflecting the fact that the recording process has been thoroughly integrated into people's work routines.

Analysing small talk at work

The analysis which follows is in three sections. The first section discusses and illustrates some of the problems of identifying and defining 'small talk' in the workplaces which were the focus of study. The second section discusses features of the distribution, structural positioning and extent of small talk in a variety of different contexts within these workplaces. The third section explores the complex functions of small talk in the workplace, demonstrating how apparently peripheral and innocuous phatic exchanges can serve pivotal roles in furthering the interpersonal (and sometimes transactional/instrumental) goals of those involved.

Identifying small talk in the workplace

One might expect that it would be relatively straightforward to identify small talk in the workplace, that it would clearly stand out from surrounding transac...