Communication is necessary for every human interaction, from ordering coffee to renting an apartment to having a relationship. However, the necessity for nearly constant communication of some type or another has the potential to cheapen the interactions.
One may have 10 to 1,000 interactions during the day that have absolutely no point and are completely forgotten in a relatively short period of time. For example, the "hey, how are you?” that is passed between any number of perfect strangers who have no business knowing, even if they did care, how that other stranger is. This question falls in the realm of “small talk” because it is, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, an “informal, friendly conversation about unimportant subjects.” But to be more specific here, I will define small talk as a conversation occurring between two or more people without the expectation of honesty. Other small talk subjects can include the classic talk about the weather and questions about classes and college life.
But the small talk realm extends to include less generic topics between people who have had a few previous interactions or between people who have had many previous interactions but, for some reason, the relationship is kept at a certain level of non-intimacy. Examples of these types of relationships are numerous: coworker/coworker, employee/employer, professor/professor, professor/student, overtly pretentious person/anyone else, ex/ex, etc.
One enters conversations of this kind with a set of assumptions about the other person based on previous experience. For example, if two people had eight encounters — two positive encounters and six negative or confusing encounters — the overall impression would likely be negative and confusing but with perhaps some hope for future understanding because of the two good encounters. This idea could be applied to any set of impressions with any two or more people, but each consecutive interaction would be less powerful than the last in influencing the cumulative impression of a particular person. Think averages, except certain interactions would be more powerful than others depending on the context.
The point of these impressions is to understand who the other person is — what that person wants, what they're thinking, what they really mean when they say those words, etc. — and from these questions and others like them, a subtext is formed. Often, the questions regarding subtext are answered by tone and body language, though they can also be answered by previously accumulated knowledge. For example, if a person who gives a generally happy impression seems irritated and short during an interaction, then one may assume based on past experience that something must be wrong rather than assuming his/her personality has completely changed. Yet if the source of the problem is discovered during the small talk — if he/she is hungry — then one adds to the general knowledge that this person becomes cranky when he/she is hungry. Thus even as past knowledge aids in the discovery of new knowledge, the new knowledge becomes part of the cumulative impression.
The words do not necessarily address the subtext, though they are usually essential to its existence. The seemingly pointless talk becomes a catalyst to discuss (through body language, tone, pauses, glances, eye contact, etc.) a truer conversation beneath the surface, a conversation often with the purpose of understanding each other (though, if the motive is something other than understanding, the subtext could be even more complex and interesting).
An example to sum it all up: A male professor and a female student are walking down the hall toward each other. The professor is kind, and the student admires him but does not know what he thinks of her as a student. As they exchange how-are-yous, she wonders if he is appreciative of or indifferent toward her as a student (subtextual question). She uses his kind tone and his choice to stop to talk to her as an answer: He does appreciate and value her, at least enough to stop unbegrudgingly (subtextual answer). The professor happens to know (because people talk, even professors) that the student went home for an emergency over the weekend. If the professor follows the student's "I'm doing well" with direct eye contact and an "I'm really glad to hear that," then the student gathers that he knows about her trip and is now wondering if he knows the cause. The professor is able to observe her reaction and determine how she feels about that trip and if she is ashamed or accepting of the cause. They talk politely about due dates in class and then move along to their respective destinations. The student begins to wonder just how much the professor cares about her and the cause of the emergency (if he knows it), and the professor adds his observations to what he thinks of her and the emergency.
Subtextual conversations are almost as common as small talk itself. Perhaps one learns much more about a person through the things that are not said. Subtext gives small talk a greater purpose and makes it much more interesting. And that is why I don't always hate small talk.
