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 1: LOCATING SMALL TALK THEORETICALLY 1. Doing collegiality and keeping control at work: small talk in government departmentsJanet Holmes 2. Institutional identity work: a better lensKaren Tracy and Julie M. Naughton 3. Mutually captive audiences: small talk and the genre of close-contact service encountersMichael McCarthy 4. Silence and small talkAdam Jaworski PART 2: PROCEDURAL ASPECTS: PARTICIPANTS ORIENTATIONS TO AND ORGANISATION OF SMALL TALK 5. Calling just to keep in touch: regular and habitualised telephone calls as an environment for small talkPaul Drew and Kathy Chilton 6. Talk about the weather: small talk, leissure talk and the travel industryNikolas Coupland adn Virpi Ylanne-McEwan 7. Social rituals, formulaic speech and small talk at the supermarket checkoutKoenraad Kuiper and Marie Findall PART 3: SMALL TALK, SOCIABILITY AND SOCIAL COHESION 8. Gossipy events at family dinners: negotiating sociability, presence and the moral orderShoshana Blum-Kulka 9. Small talk and subversion: female speakers backstageJennifer Coates PART 4: PROFESSIONAL AND COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS 10. Sociable talk in women's health care contexts: two forms of non-medical talkSandy L. Ragan 11. Small talk in service dialogues: the conversational aspects of transactional telephone talkChristine Cheepen