Most people will tell you they hate small talk. It can feel awkward, especially when it steers to that blandest of topics, the weather.
We turn to the weather when we can’t think of anything else to talk about. This is because we can be sure the other person will share the experience of rain or sunshine. But the weather is something you could talk about with anyone. It’s so universal it becomes meaningless and seems to assume no other common ground. No wonder it’s awkward.
The solution is to think about “audience design” in your use of language. This is a foundational principle of all communication. When we communicate, we are not just exchanging information, rather we are influencing each other. You can only achieve this influence using language if you consider who your audience is, what will they notice, how will they understand what you say, and how will they react.
To apply meaningful audience design we need to take the social power of language seriously. Here’s how you can harness that power on your next social outing.
It’s a jungle out there
Language is a form of animal communication. One of its functions is to create and regulate social relationships.
In all species with complex social systems, there are certain forms of behaviour individuals engage in to show who their closest allies are. We see this, for example, when coalitions of dolphins swim in synchrony, when baboons spend long bouts of time picking at each other’s skin, and when pairs of white-faced capuchins carry out mock attacks on random inanimate objects.
While language is much more than a display behaviour, it serves similar functions.
For example, consider the opposite of small talk: conversation about your most personal affairs. We can all recognise that an embarrassing health condition is not a good place to start a conversation with the spouse of a workmate you’ve just met at an end-of-year party.
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Oxford biologist Robin Dunbar defines various layers of social distance which distinguish our relationships. He starts with our innermost circle of around seven people, known as a “support clique”. These are the ones we’d call first in an emergency, or go to first if we needed a big favour.
The circles move out to a “sympathy group” of around 20 people, and so on, including Dunbar’s famous group of 150 familiar acquaintances. We design our language to fit our degrees of familiarity or intimacy within these various layers.
Strangers are friends you haven’t met yet
The problem is that in our species’ evolutionary past we spent our time in much smaller groups than today. For most of human history it was rare to meet a stranger. It was usually quite clear who we were talking to, and what common ground we already shared. These days we talk to strangers all the time.
This is the dilemma of small talk. On the one hand, the person you are about to talk to is not in one of your defined social circles, so you have little or no common ground to draw on. Nor is it appropriate to talk about the kinds of probing personal matters that would suit a closer relationship.
And you don’t want to wallow in that lack of common ground by talking about the most vacuous thing possible, like the weather. What to do?
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Hacking the chat
One approach is to be guided by American writer and lecturer Dale Carnegie, author of How to Win Friends and Influence People (first published in 1936).
His fourth principle was this: “Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.”
1. Be generous
Finding a way to get someone talking about what they know is a win-win.
First, by being generous you give the other person a way to avoid the discomfort of not knowing what to say. If they are talking about what they know, they will be comfortable. And showing interest in the other person’s knowledge and experience is a good way to engage their interest in return.
As the Ancient Latin writer Publilius Syrus is supposed to have said: “We are interested in others when they are interested in us.” In this way, we move from the bland, generic topics of small talk to topics that are tailored by definition to your conversational partner, thereby maximising audience design.
This requires that we resist the urge to talk about ourselves, and instead allow the other that privilege.
2. Be curious
Everybody you meet knows things you don’t. Why do people do the things they do? How does a person get into that kind of work? What is life like in the places they know and that you haven’t been to? And so on.
Again, by resisting the urge to talk about nothing, or to talk about ourselves, we stand to gain by learning new things. That is one of the many magic tricks of language.
As you are listening and learning, you have opportunities to contribute, too, with feedback, prompts and follow-ups. And, ideally, by this time your conversation has hopefully developed an organic two-way exchange of generous curiosity.
When looking down the barrel of a conversation with someone you don’t know, resist the twin urges of boring conversation: the urge to talk about nothing and the urge to talk about yourself.
Instead, apply the combination of generosity (let the conversation be about their world) and curiosity (you will learn new things). Together, we can rid ourselves of the futility and awkwardness of small talk.
