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Lingthusiasm Episode 51: Small talk, big deal
🕑 Added 2020-12-17 22:41:51 +0000 UTC“Cold enough for ya?” “Nice weather for ducks.”
Small talk is a valuable piece of our social interactions – it can be a way of having a momentary exchange with someone you don’t know very well or a bridge into getting to know someone better by figuring out which deeper conversational topics might be of mutual interest.
In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about the science behind small talk: how we pick topics for small talk conversation, the fine art of media references from memes to movies, and our own tested strategies for dodging awkward small talk questions while keeping the conversation flowing, such as when you’re having a not-great time but don’t want to talk about it, and that ubiquitous linguist question “so, how many languages do you know?”
Announcements
Crash Course Linguistics videos are available now and coming out weekly! Keep an eye out for them around 2pm North American Eastern Time on Fridays for the rest of 2020 (except a few holiday Fridays) and into early 2021. If you want to get an email each week with some further reading and practice exercises on each topic, you can also check out the companion issues of Mutual Intelligibility. Become a Patron and get access to the Crash Course channel in the Lingthusiasm Discord to chat about each episode!
For links to all the things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/637790657255227392/lingthusiasm-episode-51-small-talk-big-deal
Comments
"What's keeping you busy?" Is another way in without assuming paying job
In Terra Ignota, Mycroft mentions that the 20 hour work week lead to people dropping the question "what do you do for work" since it makes up such a small part of the daily life of people in the 2450s. As someone who works in a job that is really boring from the outside that part of the book always makes me wish ppl dropped that question now since 2/3 of my time is not at work. I loved the point about asking "what have you been working on" or "what's a project you did recently you're proud of" since that would let me talk about climbing, or language, or reading instead of insurance. Gonna start using that now!
