The secret virtues of small talk

FORD PREFECT, an alien passing for a human in “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, wonders about earthlings’ peculiar “habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in ‘It’s a nice day,’ or ‘You’re very tall’.” He considers, then rejects the theory that human mouths seize up if not continually utilised, before concluding that if human beings “don’t keep on exercising their lips…their brains start working.”

With this observation the late Douglas Adams expressed a common high-flown opinion about small talk: it is trivial, or perhaps worse, a substitute for real speech and thought. “Should we talk about the weather?” sings Michael Stipe of REM in “Pop Song 89”. “Should we talk about the government?” Listeners are given to understand that little could be emptier than “Hot out today, isn’t it?”, or a casual political gripe.

Yet at the end of a year in which people around the world have mostly been deprived of face-to-face banter—and were forced under lockdown to concentrate on work, or on more intense conversations with family and close friends—many report feeling tired, bored, alienated and lonely. With luck, in 2021 more people will be back on trains and buses, and in offices, shops and restaurants—places where they will again engage in empty chatter. Research suggests they will benefit.

...