ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to ask what precisely is it about the weather that imbues it with the supposed attribute of 'neutrality', and shows how weather talk in fact functions in naturally occurring talk. It focuses on the 'classically phatic' frame for weather, weather talk as part of small talk. The weather and packing talk is almost infinitely extensible, unlike the bounded and structured non-verbal and verbal stages of the transaction itself The weather and packing talk is almost infinitely extensible, unlike the bounded and structured non-verbal and verbal stages of the transaction itself. In interstitial weather talk, they perform as individuals and as 'co-experiencers of the weather'. The contrary case can be made, however, for weather mattering, and impacting on people's lifestyle choices and possibilities. Weather talk in the travel agency data emerges as a functionally diverse and variably contextualised phenomenon, certainly not uniformly contained -within the notion of phatic communion.
