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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3642 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 25, 2022

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I’m interested in your codification of the levels of small talk. Was that spur-of-the-moment, or is it from somewhere?

Entirely inspired by @f3zinker's post, in fact, and completely original to me here.

Google suggests I'm far from the first to think along these lines, though at a glance most of the articles out there are "levels of conversation" or "levels of communication" that put "small talk" at the bottom--or they are lists about making "better" small talk. Analytically, talk is "small" when it is about "unimportant or uncontroversial matters, especially as engaged in on social occasions" (via Oxford) but the Wikipedia article suggests there are scholars who have explored the subject more deeply (including some culture war inroads on gender and culture differences in small talk).

I may be breaking the analytic concept a little by suggesting attention to "small talk" at different levels of relationship, since most discussions of "small talk" frame it as taking place between strangers or acquaintances rather than between friends or intimates--as Wikipedia suggests that "small talk" especially "helps new acquaintances to explore and categorize each other's social position." But I do think something plausibly characterized as "small talk" occurs frequently between friends and intimates, so I felt like it was probably worth thinking about the matter more inclusively.

That pairs well with my understanding of friendship levels, and how they're all qualitatively different, not just differing in amount of friendship.

  1. Acquaintances have shared attributes,

  2. Friends have shared experiences, and

  3. Intimates (ohana, family and found family) have shared purpose.

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