ABSTRACT
Small talk is always regarded as trivial and non-important to some involving conversations about the weather, family and weekend. Yet changes in workplace cultures lead to the increasing recognition of the importance of informal exchange for knowledge sharing while building trust and team spirit. Yet there seems to be a lack of formal training for informal use of language for chit chat and small talk in the workplace.
There are a number of corpus-based studies of workplace discourse mostly focusing on business talk. A recent breakthrough is a small talk-only subcorpora, the Small Talk at Work sub-corpus (STW) compiled from a larger workplace-based corpus. While the role of small talk cannot be ignored, how to make effective use of it to achieve different communicative purposes in the workplace is also important. This chapter first outlines what small talk can help achieve in workplace communication and what to be noted. Relevant quantitative and qualitative analyses of small talk in the subcorpora are then outlined, followed by examples of phrases/idiomatic expressions that can be used for small talk in different occasions. The role played by non-verbal communication is also covered.
