How to make small talk

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A sense of humor, erudition and appropriate compliments will help.

Small talk, or small talk, originated in France and England. In the 19th century, the Russian high society adopted the skill of the dialogue of associations (another name for small talk), but it was lost over the years of Soviet history. However, the roots of the domestic inability to conduct small talk are even deeper: non-binding conversation for establishing contact is absent not only in our culture, but also in the language code.

There are simply no speech samples of the small talk genre in our arsenal, and we have nothing to build an easy conversation out of. Moreover, our very mentality seems to resist "little conversations". In conversation, we love depth, and English talking about the weather seems empty to us, while Chinese small talk about food seems silly.

Meanwhile, business etiquette is actively developing in Russia, which involves communication at business meetings, forums, business breakfasts. In these formats, too serious and personal conversations are unacceptable. How, in a few minutes, to win over a stranger or unfamiliar person, to establish contact and at the same time not to push away? There is only one way out: we will have to come up with Russian small talk. But before coming up with your own, you should pay attention to what has already been invented.

What can be borrowed from English small talk

There are a lot of thematic taboos in English conversation, because in this format of communication one cannot argue, violate the boundaries of the interlocutor, spoil his mood or make him bored. Residents of Foggy Albion do not like to talk about personal life and family relationships, about religion, health, problems at work, politics, earnings, Brexit, migrants, philosophy, football (especially if you are from Manchester and your counterpart is from Liverpool).

It is easier to list decent topics for conversation than to remember all the English taboo topics. However, such a careful selection suggests that we are faced with completely safe and win-win options that will be appropriate in almost any situation and with any interlocutor.

Safe topics for easy conversation

1. Weather

A typical English conversation about the weather looks like this:

- It's pretty warm today.

- Yes, it was a wonderful day.

“It seems like the sun came out for the first time this week.

- Yes, I do not remember that the sun was shown for more than ten minutes these days.

- It seems that the summer before last there were also many cloudy days.

- I remember that summer very well, my family and I just rented a lovely cottage in Sussex near the coast, but we never even went on a picnic …

Perhaps this topic is not the most successful for Russian speakers, but if you approach the issue with humor and ingenuity, then the weather can be quite amiss. I will give examples that I heard myself:

• "It seems pointless to take a taxi: it is pouring so much that it is time to start building the ark."
• “Come in, sit down. It's pretty warm here. " - "Yes, I will take off my hat as soon as it freezes from my head."

Here the famous English rule of creating a comic is not too bad - "not so bad."

2. Pets

The British are dog lovers. The queen mother herself supports the fashion for dogs, so letting go of a comment about the breed of a passing animal or asking about the health of a colleague's terrier is a perfectly acceptable start to a conversation in Foggy Albion.

- I have a dog of the same breed as on this calendar.

- Oh really? My mother had exactly the same, this is a wonderful breed.

- You are absolutely right, there is almost no trouble with these dogs. True, they are very mobile.

- But from some side it is even a plus.

3. The object in the hands of the interlocutor

As an example, I will give an incident that happened to me personally and puzzled me at first.

"Are you going to eat this cake alone?" a saleswoman asked me in a small bakery next to our home in Warrington.

I had time to be offended, and twice: do I really look like a person who has no one to eat cake with? Or is the employee hinting that it's time for me to quit eating pastries at night in a dark kitchen?

But then it dawned on me that they were trying to start small talk with me and there was a very specific meaning behind this strange question. In essence, this is a question about the composition of the family (the same too personal taboo question like “Do you have children?”), But it was asked very correctly. Seeing a new face, the saleswoman wanted to find out how often I would come to her pastry shop and buy sweets.

“My husband is not very fond of sweets, but I will definitely let him try,” I replied after an indecently prolonged pause.

The lady breathed out a sigh of relief. To hurt the interlocutor is the worst of evils in English conversation, and my face, apparently, expressed intense reflections.

“I hope you both enjoy it. Have a nice day, come with your husband, we have more nuts and sweets based on stevia! she smiled. Voila, the goal has been achieved: the exchange of information has taken place, there is contact.

The question about the subject is good because it has a clear situational framework, from which it is not so easy to go into the personal zone. An unusual pen or sticker on a laptop, conference program - everything can be a reason to start a light conversation. I spoke to one of my future students, trying to find out who Totoro was, in the form of which her phone case was made. As a result, we studied with her for almost two years, and it all started with an object in her hands.

Rules that can be adopted

1. Agree with the interlocutor. Even if a banality was expressed, it is always nice to hear a “yes” answer: “Good weather cheers you up so much!” - "One cannot but agree with this."
2. Use humor. If everything is bad, imagine what could have been worse. If everything is dazzlingly beautiful, pretend not to attach too much importance to it. The “not so bad” rule works in both cases in small talk.
3. Compliment and ask questions. Even if you do not like animals, since we are talking about them, praise the interlocutor's dog. Or his cat (this topic is definitely a win-win). It is also appropriate to ask a question, make a comment, or compliment the subject in the interlocutor's hands.

What else will help you conduct small talk in Russian?

Russian speakers have much less taboo topics for communicating with strangers than English speakers. The following inappropriate topics can be identified with certainty:

• nationality;
• family composition, marital status;
• income level;
• religion and attitude to religion;
• state of health, illness, death;
• acute social issues (for example, my students named feminism among such topics, since it is often understood and perceived ambiguously).

On the one hand, weak thematic regulation is a plus, since it is easier to find a common topic for conversation. On the other hand, it is a minus, because even in a short conversation, a conflict situation can arise. From this characteristic follows the first important skill in order to successfully conduct small talk.

1. Switching theme

- Do you have children?

- No.

- Usually they answer that there is, so I ask this question to find common topics.

“I can lie if you like. Ask again.

- M-yes. Awful start.

This is not a dialogue from a play of the theater of the absurd, but a real conversation that I heard with my own ears. The person chose an unsuccessful question to start the conversation, and having received a negative answer, tried to explain that the situation had not improved. Nevertheless, the course of the conversation was corrected with the help of humor. The offer to lie and the comment “horrible start” were already spoken with a smile. In this case, the technique of extreme sharpening of the situation, turning it into a parody of itself, worked.

To switch the topic, you can use a joke or a question that seemed to suddenly pop into your head. And if you have mutual acquaintances with the interlocutor, switching the topic is even easier:

• "And I recently met our classmate!"
• “How is your boss doing? We once worked with him on the same project."
• “I completely forgot, Alexey asked me to say hello.”

2. Questions that suggest a detailed answer

Use them instead of closed-ended questions that can be answered yes or no. For example: “To be honest, I never shared the idea that checks like the Rands test can actually determine the vitality of a team. What do you think? A question like this, posed to colleagues, can generate a whole discussion.

3. Expanded answers

Even if the question can be answered in monosyllables, it is important to give the other person a clue to keep the conversation going. Enter in your reply any new information to which he might react.

- I noticed that you love to cook.

- Yes, I especially like trying new recipes. Every time I come to a new country, I try to find out some culinary secrets from the locals.

- Oh, are you also a traveler? This year I visited Kamchatka for the first time - I finally made my dream come true.

4. Erudition and responsiveness

Name a couple of names from the area you are talking about, or from the area of your general professional interests, give an interesting fact. It always makes a good impression.

As an example, let's take the following conversation at a coffee break at a book marketing conference:

- An interesting idea about a creative approach in sales was voiced by Ivanov: about how to sell a book to a person that he did not even think to buy.

- This approach works especially funny when you need to sell a book by Dale Carnegie.

Or like this:

- Can you advise interesting places where you can go in Kazan?

- It is usually recommended to visit the Kremlin, Bauman Street, Staro-Tatarskaya Sloboda. And I would also recommend going to the Katchalov Theater. You will not be disappointed, only tickets must be booked in advance.

- Oh, do you like theater?

In my opinion, small talk is one of the most important, but also the most difficult genres of business communication. We must adapt to the moment and to the interlocutor, and at the same time not forget about our own interests. However, if you know the key features of such a conversation and practice regularly, you can develop your own conversation techniques and become a real communication guru.