What a British Woman, a French Woman, and TikTok Taught Me About the Meaning of Small Talk

I was scrolling through TikTok when I came across a video from Angelique Joan discussing small talk.

It was a sketch featuring a British woman and a French woman in conversation. The British woman is explaining what small talk is and how to do it.

This is part of their dialogue near the end of the video:

British woman: “It’s called small talk.”

French woman: “Why small?”

British woman: “Because the conversations are small.”

French woman: “And the emotional investment is also small.”

British woman: “Tiny… The smaller the topic, the more British it is.”

French woman: “So, it’s not called small talk because you talk about small things. It’s called small talk because nobody is allowed to say anything big.”

I had never thought about small talk that way before. I had always understood “small” to mean that the subject itself was unimportant. Things like the weather, traffic, or coffee. Your weekend. My weekend. The kinds of things people say to avoid silence.

But the idea of emotional investment being small suddenly made the whole concept make sense to me.

Small talk isn’t primarily about information

For a long time, I thought conversation was supposed to accomplish something.

You ask a question because you want an answer. You give information because the other person needs to know it. You talk because there’s something worth saying.

That’s probably why small talk had always felt strange to me.

Someone says, “Busy day?”

I say, “Yeah.”

They say, “Same.”

And that’s it.

What exactly did either of us learn?

But I probably only looked at the information being exchanged and decided that, because the information was unimportant, the conversation itself must also be unimportant.

“Nice weather today” doesn’t tell you much about another person, but it can still say something. Sometimes, I think it says, I’m acknowledging you, or I’m open to talking. So, no. Small talk is not only an exchange of information. It’s a small exchange of feelings that feel human.

Small feelings make small talk feel human

There’s a difference between emotional intimacy and emotional presence.

You’re not having a deep conversation with someone you just met. You’re not telling them your biggest fears or explaining the complicated history of your family. But that doesn’t mean there are no feelings involved, just not the intimate ones.

I don’t have to tell you something deeply personal to let you know how I’m actually doing or feeling.

I can say, “I’m exhausted,” “I’m weirdly excited about this,” “I’m nervous about the presentation,” or “I’ve been looking forward to Friday all week.”

None of those statements are particularly deep. They’re just little pieces of what’s happening inside me. They’re not the big feelings you save for people you’re close to but the smaller ones that can exist comfortably in an ordinary conversation. The ones that help you be emotionally present.

No need for bigger questions, but better follow-ups.

Something that has always caused me anxiety is thinking I need to be interesting in order to have a good conversation. Like having a chest full of stories, opinions, or something clever to say when the conversation slows down.

As an introvert, that can make small talk feel like work.

Someone says, “I went to a concert this weekend,” and suddenly I’m thinking, Okay, what am I supposed to do with that?

But maybe I don’t have to do much. They already gave me something. So, I could ask, “How was it?” or “Was that something you’d been wanting to see for a while?”

Now I’m not inventing a new topic. I’m following the thread they already gave me. And this is where it clicked! As an English coach, I’ve learned to make my students speak. And I’ve used several follow-ups!

Why didn’t I connect these two concepts before? I don’t know. But I realized I’ve been using with my students something I could also use in my own conversation. So, what I’ve done is: notice something they said, ask one natural follow-up, then react to their answer instead of immediately preparing another question.

If someone tells me, “I started reading this novel,” I might ask what it’s about. After they explain it, I can say, “That sounds like exactly the kind of book I’d get obsessed with,” (if that’s the case).

Or someone might ask, “Have you seen the new movie?”

You say yes.

“Did you like it?”

“Yeah, actually.”

“What did you like about it?”

And suddenly you’re talking about the kinds of stories you like, the movies you grew up watching, or the fact that you always cry at the same kind of ending.

Nobody announced that the conversation had become deep, and you definitely don’t have to force a conversation to become deeper. You just have to notice when the other person gives you an opening.

Maybe the conversation doesn’t have to be big

I keep thinking about that TikTok. Perhaps it was not intended to have such a profound meaning that now I’m writing about it. Despite that, one word somehow made me rethink something I had never really questioned.

“Tiny.”

The French woman said that the emotional investment is small.

The British woman agreed with “Tiny.”

Before that video, small talk meant random questions about things that mattered little. Now I think the subject can be trivial while the interaction isn’t.

The weather doesn’t matter that much. But the person talking about it does.

Your weekend probably isn’t going to change anyone’s life. But telling someone that you had a great one, a terrible one, or spent the whole thing recovering from the previous week gives them a tiny glimpse of you.

A conversation can contain almost no useful information and still communicate something.

I see you.

I’m curious about you.

I’m listening.

Small talk is about making the small emotional investment Angelique was talking about. And sometimes, that’s enough to open the conversation into something more, if the other person wants it and the moment calls for it.

The conversation can be small. The feeling doesn’t have to be.