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A successful international graduate student who is a PhD
candidate from a highly competitive business school confided, “I have to
eat lunches with my advisor and students from the Executive MBA
program, and I never know what to say. I end up sitting silently the
whole time, and that makes me feel stupid.”
Even international graduate students who are fluent when
presenting or participating in class discussions often lack the cultural
knowledge and linguistic fluency to interact smoothly in casual
discussions with an academic or professional audience. They often
misunderstand the importance of “small talk” in professional situations.
These linguistic and cross-cultural gaps can especially cause problems
in professional development. A great deal of professional development
stems from what begins as a casual chat with colleagues, but which
develops into a more meaningful exchange of techniques, ideas, and
experiences (Haigh, 2005, p. 8). In his article, “How to Get the Most
Out of Scientific Conferences,” Reis (2000) highlights the importance of
interacting with other researchers, as well as the informal
conversations and the “no-notes talks” that scholars often give about
their work and research. Without the linguistic ability and
cross-cultural knowledge needed to take part in such collegial
discussions, international graduate students are often left out of
highly useful (but casual and spontaneous) professional development
opportunities.
The Intercultural Communication Center at Carnegie Mellon has
developed a 90-minute Small Talk seminar that focuses on the
cross-cultural background and practices of small talk in the United
States. Typical small talk in the United States plays the role of
getting people comfortable in a culture where social status and context
are less defined than in some other cultures. In the United States, it
is expected that you will chat with people who are both above and below
you in social status; in fact, many Americans are uncomfortable with the
idea that there are differences in social status in the United States.
Also, because the United States is an immigrant country, it is hard to
know another person’s background or how other people fit into U.S.
society simply by looking at them. Americans use small talk to help set
context and define the role of their discussant so that they can
interact more comfortably. Although even many Americans themselves don’t
realize it, successful small talk is about building comfort with each other.
In addition, Americans are socialized as children to be able to
move in and out of social groups smoothly—witness that in K–12
schooling in the United States, children rarely stay with one classroom
group for longer than a year and by high school, they move in and out of
different student groups with each class period. The ability to move
smoothly into these groups is a high value skill. This is very different
than in other cultures, where students may start with one group in
school and stay with that group in all classes until they graduate—not
only K–12, but also in the university. Discussing this information with
the students gives them a perspective on U.S. culture that has been
hidden to them up to this point and gives them a very different
perspective on how U.S. culture functions.
Students are usually confused about every part of the small
talk process: how to start small talk, how to keep a conversation going,
what topics to talk about, and how to end small talk. They realize that
Americans often talk about the weather, but they don’t understand why:
that the weather is a ritualized, nonthreatening topic that is used to
begin a conversation with a person whose role you cannot pinpoint
without further discussion. People in the United States use the weather
(or local sports or upcoming holiday breaks and events) as an
introduction to a more consequential topic. Americans also use these
ritualized topics to extend an invitation to chat; a statement like
“It’s really hot out there today!” is not a statement about the weather,
but an invitation to engage in conversation. If students say a simple
“yes” with no follow up, they are rejecting the invitation to chat, and
may not receive another one.
In the class session, I illustrate how the process of
successful small talk works by looking at the “string of pearls” method:
First move: Opening comment or statement, inviting conversation
Second move: Reply to opening, then volunteer free information or ask a question
Third move: Respond to free information, then volunteer information/question in turn
And so on…
In the session, we work together as a group to invent several
sample small talks that might play out like this:
First speaker: Wow, it’s really hot out there today! [Speaker extends invitation to chat]
Second speaker: Oh really? I guess I think
it’s not too bad. I’m from India, so we have this kind of weather all
the time. [Speaker replies, then offers free information about
self]
First speaker: Oh really? I’m from Canada,
so we don’t get this hot weather very often. What part of India are you
from? [Speaker replies, gives free information about self, then asks a
follow-up question]
Second speaker: I’m from the south. We have
hot weather and even hotter food! [Speaker answers question, then offers
free information]
First speaker: Oh yes, I can’t even eat some
Indian food sometimes—it’s too hot. Have you been to Canada? [The
speaker replies and asks follow-up question]
Second speaker: Sure! I have family living in Toronto…
The students can easily see how the conversation could continue
until the speakers wanted to break it off to go about other tasks and
how, if they meet a second time, they could easily fall back into a
conversation that refers to information from the previous conversation.
The collocutors are now comfortable with each other.
After this whole group practice, the students move into dyads
or triads to work on building small talks with each other in prescribed
situations:
1. You are waiting in line to get your documents signed at the
Office of International Education before you go to your country for a
break.
2. You are sitting in this classroom waiting for this seminar to begin.
3. You are sitting at the University Center after this seminar
when another student from the class sits down near you.
Students begin to make small talk using the first context.
After about 3 minutes, I stop them and say “Now imagine that the
receptionist in the office has just called your name. You have to go.
How do you end the conversation?” We brainstorm ways to end the
conversation quickly and pleasantly, then they try it out in their small
groups and report back how it worked out.
The students then begin with new partners to try the second,
then the third situations. After 3 or 4 minutes, I stop the small talk
by telling them they need to end the conversation. They try out ways to
end each of the small talks, share how they ended the small talks in
each situation, and talk about how successfully they felt their
conversations were.
By the end of the 90-minute session, students report feeling
more at ease with the concept of small talk as well as more willing to
try out these conversations in the future.
References
Haigh, N. (2005). Everyday conversation as a context for
professional learning and development. International Journal
for Academic Development, 10(1),
3–16.
Reis, R. M. (2000, February 4). How to get the most out of
scientific conferences. Chronicle of Higher
Education, Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Get-the-Most-Out-of-/46399/
Rebecca Oreto is the associate director for the
Intercultural Communication Center at Carnegie Mellon University. She is
the founder of the ITA Professionals Symposium and has held several
leadership positions in the TESOL International Teaching Assistants
Interest Section. | 
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