1. What is small talk?

Joe: Small talk in my opinion is when you first meet a person and you're not sure what to talk about, so you basically ask questions to get to know them more, and just essentially the normal questions like where you're from, have you got any siblings, stuff like that, just to get someone ,like, … This could happen at work or a bar and, yeah. Politics, that's a main topic that I think you shouldn't bring up straight away to a person, might shock them. I think, also, what their beliefs are as well, and generally just topics that are sensible and maybe best not to talk about straight away.

Elena: Small talk is a kind of conversation that you have with strangers while you're waiting for a bus or also you're in line at the doctor's office. A very popular topic here in Italy is the weather, but also complaints about public transport delays. I think that an inappropriate topic is criticism about physical appearance or also political issues.

Stephen: I think small talk is the type of conversation you make with somebody when you want to appear friendly, but you don't have anything specific, you know, you need to share with them. So you just talk about day-to-day things. Where I live in Vietnam, it's quite common to actually start small talk by asking about food or health. For example, you could say, Anzun is a form of 'hi', which you're asking somebody if they've eaten yet. And that's how they say hello. In my culture in the US, I would say something that definitely should be avoided when it comes to small talk would be politics, because people get pretty passionate about it, and you never know what side of the fence someone's on.

Tina: I guess small talk depends on who you're actually talking to. So if you know the people and you're just sort of catching up, very often we talk about oh God it's got to be the weather, always the weather! When I lived in Italy, whenever you saw someone you hadn't seen for a while, you talked about the weather. You talked about the orto, which is like your vegetable plot, and how it was getting on, because I lived out in the countryside. And then politics, which for me is a big no-no. So, for small talk, good topics: definitely weather, maybe what you did for the weekend or something. Politics, stay away from. Wages, stay away from. Anything to do with money, I reckon!

Joanne:  For me, small talk are those little conversations that we have with people where what we say isn't really the important thing. It's more about making a connection, maybe making people feel comfortable or leading into a more serious discussion topic. I'm from the UK and I think people small talk quite a lot there. Usually it's about the weather, but there could be other topics, too. For example celebrity gossip or maybe sports events. Some subjects which I think are probably inappropriate for small talk are serious things such as politics or maybe topics which are rather personal, talking about people's relationships or something like that.