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Journal of Multicultural Discourses
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A cultural approach to small talk: a
double-edged sword of sociocultural
reality during socialization into the
workplace
Bernie Chun Nam Mak a & Hin Leung Chui b
a Department of English , The Chinese University of Hong Kong
b Department of Mathematics and Information Technology , The
Hong Kong Institute of Education
Published online: 16 Jan 2013.
To cite this article: Bernie Chun Nam Mak & Hin Leung Chui (2013) A cultural approach to small
talk: a double-edged sword of sociocultural reality during socialization into the workplace, Journal
of Multicultural Discourses, 8:2, 118-133, DOI: 10.1080/17447143.2012.753078
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2012.753078
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A cultural approach to small talk: a double-edged sword of sociocultural
reality during socialization into the workplace
Bernie Chun Nam Mak
a
* and Hin Leung Chui
b
a
Department of English, The Chinese University of Hong Kong;
b
Department of Mathematics
and Information Technology, The Hong Kong Institute of Education
(Received 31 July 2012; final version received 9 November 2012)
People transitioning into a workplace usually face the challenge of socializing into
their working communities. While small talk is one domain in the process, small
talk itself is influenced by ethnicity of participants and norms of the workplace.
We present a case study of how a newcomer transitioning toward integral status
interacts with small talk in her new workplace. From a linguistic perspective,
we examine the discourse of small talk collected from a new expatriate from
Philippines, Anna, and her new colleagues in a Hong Kong firm. The analysis
illustrates how their small talk is implicitly associated with Filipino core values,
Hong Kong social customs, and the local organizational culture. Owing to
discrepancies and similarities, small talk can be both a hurdle and an instrument
during Anna’s socialization. The findings suggest small talk can be an indicator of
in/appropriate behavior and un/successful socialization. It can be used for
newcomers’ development of rapport; it can be used by integral members to mold
newcomers into the workplace. Nonetheless, since small talk is not a universal
behavior, any attempts can be counterproductive due to various cultural matters.
We argue that small talk can be seen as a double-edged sword of sociocultural
reality in workplace socialization.
Keywords: Hong Kong; small talk; workplace discourse; cultural discourse;
organizational socialization; intercultural communication
1. Introduction
The process through which people integrate into the workplace is what scholars
traditionally called organizational socialization (Bauer, Morrison, and Callister 1998)
or what we call workplace socialization. Newcomers acquire the knowledge and skills
which characterize the new working environment (Ramsey 2004), through formal
settings like preservice training sessions and/or informal settings like tea breaks
(Mak, Liu, and Deneen 2012), changing themselves from being ‘new’ to being
‘integral’ in terms of task competence and social relations (Van Maanen and Schein
1979; Wenger 1998). The informal setting is particularly significant for socialization
in the aspects of communication, such as jokes (Vinton 1989), narratives (Brown
1985), and spontaneous humor (Mak, Liu, and Deneen 2012). One underexplored
area is small talk (Holmes and Marra 2004). Small talk is particularly challenging to
newcomers in that it not only requires the competence to judge what is the
*Corresponding author. Email: bcnmak@gmail.com
Journal of Multicultural Discourses, 2013
Vol. 8, No. 2, 118133, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2012.753078
#2013 Taylor & Francis
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appropriate context, but also needs specific knowledge about how cultures can
influence the talk in a workplace (Schein 1984).
This paper aims to present a case study of how a newcomer, who is an expatriate,
interacts with the use of small talk within her workplace, and how her colleagues
negotiate with her. While we will touch on her small talk from the perspectives of
socialization and organizational culture, we focus on how such participation is subtly
influenced by (1) the core values of her home culture, Filipino, and (2) the core values
of her colleagues’home culture, Hong Kong.
2. Socialization into the workplace as communities of practice
2.1. Socialization into the workplace
Workplace socialization includes acquisition and practice of conventionalized
‘knowledge for finishing tasks’and ‘relational skills for developing collaborative
work relationships’toward full membership of the workplace (Taormina and Bauer
2000; Van Maanen and Schein 1979). ‘How to talk’is in the relational domain in this
membership-creating process (Drew 2002). However, recent studies tend to suggest
that the task-related and the relation-related aspects overlap and complement each
other (Blaka and Filstad 2007).
Workplace socialization goes beyond formal settings and strategies (Matthews
1999). As mentioned above, there are theoretically formal and informal settings for
workplace socialization. Nevertheless, it is difficult to demarcate a clear line between
them (Billett 2002). We choose the framework, Communities of Practice (CofP),
which emphasizes workplace learning via informal social interactions but embraces a
holistic view of settings (Wenger 1998), to articulate the socialization dimension of
this research.
2.2. The workplace as Communities of Practice
The CofP framework is introduced into organizational studies by Lave and
Wenger (1991), and is further refined by Wenger (1998) and later works (e.g.
Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder 2002). According to the Eckert and McConnell-
Ginet’s interpretation (1992, 464), a CofP is:
[...] an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an
endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations -
in short, practices - emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor.
In a workplace CofP, the joint enterprise taken for colleagues’goal makes them
interact; such ongoing interaction forms mutual engagement, allowing colleagues
to develop their shared repertoire as a kind of behavioral practice, a proof of
membership, and a domain for socialization. In this motivational context (Wenger,
McDermott, and Snyder 2002), newcomers participate in everyday interactions,
partly or totally understanding and practicing the workplace norms, including
communication norms, shared by integrated colleagues (Blaka and Filstad 2007).
Focusing on small talk, we additionally propose that when newcomers enter a
CofP, participation be an acknowledgment of relational change and negotiation of
membership between the new and the integral. Small talk is one way of coming to
awareness or understanding of such change and negotiation.
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3. Talk and small talk in the workplace
In ordinary settings, small talk is minimal talk which carries formulaic messages and
finite, conventional utterances (Holmes and Stubbe 2003). In workplace settings,
though, there is usually a gray area over ‘talk,’as shown in Holmes (2000b, 38) (see
the continuum in Figure 1).
Since workplace talk often starts from or moves toward the two ends on the
continuum, it is impractical to draw a clear line between the four categories of talk in the
workplace (Chiles 2007). Workplace talk can be both task- and relational-related, so
small talk and business talk sometimes run parallel with each other (Holmes and Stubbe
2003). In this study, we use ‘small talk’to refer to conversations which involve
information primarily aiming at relational purposes (Chiles 2007), rather than transac-
tional goals (Maynard and Hudak 2008). In reality, our examples will demonstrate that
within a workplace conversation, small talk can be developed from or to business talk.
Research has demonstrated the functions of small talk at work, such as
facilitating working efficiency (Hessing 1991), helping to open meetings, maintaining
solidarity for group work, filling in abnormal silence in conflict (Holmes and Fillary
2000; Holmes 2000a), and releasing previous disputes (Sotirin 2000). Appropriate
small talk helps newcomers make positive impression on other colleagues (Tracy
and Naughton 2000). Nonetheless, improper small talk can be counterproductive
(Hessing 1991; Holmes 2003). Although it is important, because of differences in
organizational cultures, the appropriate ways to doing small talk vary among
workplaces, as Holmes (2000c, 38) notes:
[...] social or collegial talk may be very important in terms of its affective components
and so serve the organization’s goals indirectly by maintaining good relationships
between employees. The extent to which such talk is tolerated; encouraged or obligatory
is one distinguishing feature of different organizational cultures.
This is why newcomers usually find small talk in their new workplaces challenging,
not to mention the fact that any local norms of small talk with colleagues may not
appear in official regulations. Nonetheless, while research generally acknowledges the
impact of organizational cultures on small talk, few studies discuss the more general
role of culture, namely ethnic/racial culture, in this aspect. In view of this gap, we
employ part of Shi-xu (2005) framework, Cultural Approach to Discourse (CAD), to
articulate the culture dimension of this research, then examining how broader cultures
may have an impact on the everyday discourse of small talk in the workplace, and how
small talk will re-create the broader cultures in which a workplace is situated.
4. CAD and small talk in the workplace
The impact of organizational norms on small talk is not difficult to understand,
but on the other hand, the culture of a workplace is strongly influenced by ethnic or
Figure 1. The continuum of talk in the workplace (Holmes 2000b, 38). Source: Reproduced
by permission of Pearson Education Limited.
120 B.C.N. Mak and H.L. Chui
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racial characteristics of its current core members (Bauer and Taylor 2001; Morrison,
Chen, and Salgado 2004). This is rarely touched on in existing discourse studies
about small talk. The CAD framework, proposed by Shi-xu (2005), provides a
suitable account for this dimension. CAD has two important propositions in
general.
One proposition is the reality-constitutive view that discourses, which are
subjective meaning-making activities via the use of linguistic symbols (e.g. spoken
texts) in a cultural context (e.g. participants’knowledge, relations, settings), are
constitutive of the reality (see Shi-xu 2005, chapter 1). Therefore, in this study,
discourse of small talk is seen as ‘the ways that reality is discursively formed,
maintained, utilized or changed’(Shi-xu 2005, 26), interplaying with specific
organizational norms and core values of participants in terms of ethnicity.
Another proposition is the in-between CAD analysis that discourses from
different, asymmetrical cultures are seen as ‘a set of diversified, competing and
dynamic ways of speaking of and acting upon the world associated with particular
communities of speakers’(Shi-xu 2005, 4344, chapter 2). Cultures which penetrate
all human experience are ideologically re/constructed through the ongoing symbolic
action, namely discourse, and can be investigated in a position of ‘in-between
cultures.’Therefore, in this study, discourse of small talk is analyzed from a
standpoint of cultural coexistence among the organizational culture and ethnicity of
participants.
To sum up the theoretical and analytical background of this study, small talk is a
domain which contributes to newcomers’socialization into the workplace, yet the
ways of doing small talk in a workplace are not only influenced by organizational
cultures but also ethnic/racial cultures of colleagues. Hence, we aim to address two
questions to investigate the role of culture in small talk during workplace
socialization:
The socialization dimension: How can a newcomer socialize into the workplace
through small talk?
The culture dimension: What cultural-relevant behavior or consideration,
if any, is involved in the socialization process?
5. Methodology and research sites
Our examples come from an original database of about 30 interactions emanating
from 24 hours of audio-recordings collected in three workplaces over a period of five
months. In this paper we only use part of the data to form a case study.
Our discoursal data are audio-recordings of participant interactions and in-
depth, face-to-face interviews collected from an American-Chinese-owned company,
Sunflower Holdings Limited (SHL), located in Hong Kong. There were approxi-
mately 15 colleagues, either under the merchandising team or administration team, in
the Hong Kong office. All colleagues in the Hong Kong office were Hong Kong
Chinese, except a Filipino newcomer who had expatriated to Hong Kong for a few
months, Anna, an assistant merchandiser who was a bilingual of Tagalog and
English. She reported that she was a ‘very Filipino’who had been brought up in a
traditional Filipino family. She used English to communicate with all Hong Kong
colleagues.
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Audio-recording of participant discourse in SHL (HK) was conducted over a 10-
week period, beginning from the 7th week of Anna’s employment and ending in the
17th. In total, 11 recordings were made. Recording lengths were on average one hour
in length. Following recording, the deputy director of SHL (HK), Gavin, was
allowed to remove any confidential information. Subsequently, the first author
identified any parts of recordings which were not analyzable due to lack of sufficient
clarity (see Shi-xu 2005 for the importance of the researcher context). After
screening, four hours of workplace discourse from 10 recordings were transcribed
for in-depth analysis. This yields four recordings from the first month, four from the
second, and two from the final half month of the data collection period. In the
transcribed data for this paper there were five participants, Gavin, Frank, Elaine,
Rebecca, and Anna, with Anna being the focus.
Interviews consisting of specific open-ended questions focused on providing
contexts (Shi-xu 2005) to the selected conversations to enhance understanding of
data and validity of inferences about what culture-related processes were involved
(Holmes and Stubbe 2003). In total, six interviews were conducted in SHL. Two 20-
minute interviews were conducted with each participant over the 10-week recording
period. At the end of the ten-week period, one final one-hour interview was
conducted with each participant, except Rebecca who was working in Mainland
China at that time. In total, approximately six hours of interview data were
collected.
6. Results and data analysis
It is essential to present the organizational culture of SHL (HK) before analysis.
SHL (HK) is a workplace where small talk usually takes place and extends to
‘shooting the breeze’in quiet seasons when buying activities are less crowded.
In other times, small talk which only consists of a few turns is an office routine for
creating a less-stressed working atmosphere. However, since distraction can lead to
business loss or failure, small talk rarely takes place when colleagues are engaged in
core-business talk.
In data analysis, our transcription convention is based on Holmes and Stubbe’s
(2003, 181) conventions (see Appendix 1). Italics in data analysis indicate direct
quotations from interviews with the participants; square brackets in direct quota-
tions indicate additional notes from the authors. Example 1 is taken from a
conversation on Anna’s desk in the first month of data collection, example 2 from the
beginning of a meeting in the last half month, example 3 from a conversation on
Frank’s desk in the second month, and example 4 from one business conversation in
the second month. All names presented are pseudonyms.
Although our analysis may unavoidably refer to some ‘essentialist’values
suggested in the literature, our ultimate goal is to demonstrate how the discourse
of small talk in the workplace interplays with these discrepancy or similar values to
form the reality during Anna’s socialization into SHL (HK). In practice, while we
will start from the selected texts and describe what happens, we will subsequently go
beyond them to focus on the participants in the events from an ‘in-between’position
(based on interview data), especially regarding the ethnical ideologies which may
have motivated them to construct such discourse of small talk.
122 B.C.N. Mak and H.L. Chui
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6.1. Colleagues’ invitation of small talk to Anna
6.1.1. Example 1
Elaine asks if Anna has brought her umbrella. Elaine is a colleague in the
administration team; her working tenure in SHL (HK) is one year longer than
Anna. In normal circumstances, she does not work with Anna, but Anna is sitting
behind her in the office.
1 Elaine: start to rain (2) have you bring your umbrella?
2 Anna: yes because I watch the weather /report\
3 Elaine: /good\ (.) I did not because this morning so sunny
4 the road to the bus stop is so far
5 Anna: perhaps you have to buy one
in /[name of convenience store nearby]\
6
7 Elaine: /no\ (.) you bring me to bus stop? leave together
8 Anna: okay
In line 1, Elaine launches small talk by mentioning the rain and asking if Anna
has brought her umbrella. Although Anna gives a general answer in line 2, when
Elaine further says that she does not have an umbrella (line 3) and complains that the
distance from the company to the bus stop is long (line 4), Anna suggests Elaine buy
an umbrella in the convenience store nearby (lines 56). Subsequently, Elaine gives a
negative, corrective response ‘no’and asks if Anna is happy to send her to the bus
stop (line 7). Anna agrees finally (line 8).
The small talk suggests different discoursal participation between Anna and
Elaine. Considering lines 57, Anna fails to give the normative expected response
to small talk initiated by the CofP member. When Elaine extends the ritualistic
weather talk (Holmes and Fillary 2000) by revealing that she did not bring her
umbrella (lines 34), she seems to actually use her utterances figuratively as an
indirect speech act of directives to ask Anna to help. Nonetheless, Anna merely
suggests Elaine buy an umbrella in the convenience store, which immediately
receives the negative response ‘no’and the on-record questioning as a direct speech
act in line 7. Yet, the problem is: what ideological matters are behind such different
discoursal participation?
When asked about her response to Elaine’s small talk, Anna said that she had felt
nothing wrong with this talk, because ‘I [i.e. Anna] can help you [i.e. Elaine] but it is
common to buy an umbrella in rainy days. We [i.e. Anna and Elaine] are not often
working together [...] not partners, not leaving the office together.’In Filipino norms,
nurturing and caring, such as accommodating, are important values to be cultivated
(e.g. Francia 1997; Rodell 2002). Normally, Filipinos are brought up to be a good
neighbor (Ventura 1991) using ‘lakas-awa’(compassionate force) to help people in
need (Astorga 2006). Nevertheless, Filipinos at the same time stress the importance
of work or transactional roles in familial relationships (Dolan 1991; Watkins and
Gerong 1997). Seeing her discoursal participation and interview answer, Anna seems
to downplay the importance of ‘lakas-awa,’but extends the differentiation in work
roles in Filipino family norms to SHL (HK), then forming her ‘inappropriate’
response to Elaine’s small talk. The reality turns out to be that Anna has moved a bit
toward the left end of Holmes’(2000b) continuum, considering work-related issues
and workplace roles while doing small talk.
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In contrast, when asked about her thoughts on Emma’s participation, Elaine
reported that she believed Anna ‘should have suggested bringing me to the bus station
at first. She [i.e. Anna] didn’t know how to be nice [i.e. to offer help] to old people [i.e.
more experienced colleagues] [...] maybe because she [i.e. Anna] just arrived (at)
Hong Kong.’Elaine’s answer reveals that Anna’s response to small talk has made
some negative impression on others (Holmes 2003) and has formed a barrier of
socialization into the workplace. Hong Kong people tend to blend Chinese and
Western traditions (Luk 1998; Redding 1997). In the literature, it has been widely
agreed that although Hong Kong people emphasize individuality due to the deep-
rooted western values (Westwood and Posner 1997), in critical moments, such as
when needing temporary help, they become relationship-oriented because of the
traditional Chinese core values (Morrison, Chen, and Salgado 2004). Elaine appears
to maintain or utilize such widely accepted Hong Kong normative practices,
transferring them to the CofP and then using small talk to do her personal request.
The reality turns out to be that Elaine has moved a bit toward the right end of
Holmes’(2000b) continuum, attempting to seek work-irrelevant help from Anna.
In short, Elaine attempts to use small talk to achieve her personal goal; Anna
gives an inappropriate response or suggestion, forming some negative impression on
Elaine. The pessimistic development of this small talk at least partly originates from
the differences between Filipino values and the Hong Kong norms, which form
different (expected) participation of small talk.
6.1.2. Example 2
There appears a problem of potential business loss due to the withdrawal of
proposed orders from a buyer who has not yet signed a contract. Anna is the contact
person of this problematic buyer. Rebecca, a member of the senior managerial team,
comes back to Hong Kong to have a face-to-face meeting with her subordinates for
solutions. Rebecca usually works in Mainland China, and before the meeting is the
third time that she meets Anna.
1 Rebecca: () three months already (.) how are you working?
2 Anna: no (.) already four months
3 Rebecca: okay Hah four months (.) then how is your work? (2) feeling good?
any big problems?
4
5 Anna: yeah it is (.) too busy
6 Rebecca: too Hah busy is good
7 not busy is not /business\
8 Anna: /too many\ thing to follow (.) the [name of buyer]
9 Rebecca: yes I know so I am here this () meeting () can’t help
Rebecca greets Anna before the meeting by small talk with the topic about her
time and work in SHL (HK) (line 1), and Anna gives the response ‘four months’to
correct Rebecca’s utterance (line 2). Rebecca admits her mistake with laughter and
self-recasts (line 3), initiating small talk again (lines 34). Then Anna says that it is
too busy (line 5); Rebecca jokingly says that ‘busy is good’(line 6) because ‘not busy
is not business’(line 7). Afterward, Anna complains about the workload and implies
the recent crisis of SHL (line 8). Rebecca acknowledges this causally with reluctance
‘can’t help’(line 9).
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This small talk can be divided into two parts for analysis, namely from lines 1 to 5
and lines 6 to 9.
In the first part, Anna corrects Rebecca’s perception of her time in SHL (HK) by
responding ‘no,’saying that it should be ‘four months’(rather than three months).
When asked why she did so in the interview, Anna commented that she ‘just thought
she [i.e. Rebecca] remembers wrong [...] then tell her (to) correct it.’It is possible
that Anna starts her reply from the left end in Holmes’(2000b) continuum, not
recognizing the main function of small talk in westernized societies like Hong Kong.
In these societies, it is common to find small talk before meetings, but this type of
small talk only carries formulaic and rapport messages (Holmes and Stubbe 2003)
which do not expect participants to take the content serious (Coupland and
Coupland 1992). Thus, when asked to comment on Anna’s correction, Rebecca in the
interview mentioned her embarrassment; she said, ‘how can I remember exactly when
you [i.e. Anna] joined us [i.e. started working in SHL (HK)]? [I] just casually asked
about you, long time no see.’The reality turns out to be that Anna’s correction may
have risked her relationship with Rebecca who maintains the normative ways of
doing small talk in the CofP. Not knowing such norms causes Anna to provide a
serious correction. However, why Anna participates seriously in this small talk? She
implies a cultural-relevant answer in the second part.
In the second part, Rebecca continues the small talk with the humorous comment
‘not busy is not business’(lines 67). Anna replies seriously by mentioning the exact
problem, which is too many things about the problematic buyer to follow (line 8).
In many ways, while Rebecca extends the small talk toward the right end of
Holmes’continuum, Anna moves to the left end and talks about work. When asked
to comment, Anna said in an apologizing tone, ‘I think she the supervisor might be
unhappy with the problem [i.e. the potential business loss]. I’m the contact person, so
she might think I am new and have caused communication problem with the buyer.’This
answer implies that Anna is thinking about work and blaming herself for her failure
when Rebecca is doing small talk. A number of studies have found that traditional
Filipinos have a unique value of face associated with their communication, which is
‘hiya,’the propensity to feel shame (Lee 1997), or the fear of losing face (Enriquez
1993; Gong and Gage 2003). Further, Filipinos value ‘kalooban,’namely self-
awareness of criticism (Mercado 1994, 2324), and ‘pakikiramdam,’namely sensing
of others’feelings (Church and Katigbak 2000; Watkins and Gerong 1997). Seeing
her report in the interview, it is possible that Anna integrates these Filipino core
values into Rebecca’s small talk, then taking a pessimistic, serious attitude toward it,
inappropriately giving over-contentious, core-business response.
Then how about Rebecca? In the whole conversation, Rebecca appears to do
phatic communion only, toward the right end of Holmes’continuum. In the
interview, Rebecca said, ‘it is normal to ask how new colleagues are working [...] But
I didn’t expect she will answer too many things to follow. Perhaps she still has not got
used to work in Hong Kong, our company.’The answer from Rebecca implies an
important thing: from her perspective as a Hong Kong Chinese, Anna’s response
does not match the wider Hong Kong context. Hong Kong people generally
appreciate a superficially pleasant workplace for easing the pressure and fast pace
due to adherence to capitalism and materialism in society (Mak 2009; also see Luk
1998). Rebecca may be attached to this practice, symbolizing the ‘pleasantness’by
small talk, as she reveals further in the interview, ‘the current atmosphere [i.e. the
problem of the buyer] is serious enough, she [i.e. Anna] should relax, smile.’But still,
Journal of Multicultural Discourses 125
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the reality turns out to be that Anna and Rebecca take the opposite approaches
along Holmes’continuum with different cultural expectations but no spontaneous
linguistic collaboration (Maynard and Hudak 2008), making this small talk develop
as a miscommunication.
All in all, Rebecca invites Anna to participate in small talk before the meeting,
but Anna corrects Rebecca’s minor mistake and focuses on work-related problems.
This not only causes Rebecca’s embarrassment and suspicion of Anna’s degree of
integration, but also embodies Anna’s new membership in the CofP. The cause of the
miscommunication in part relies on the different Filipino and Hong Kong values to
which they are possibly attached, respectively. The miscommunication draws explicit
boundaries between the new and the integral as well as the local and the expatriated.
6.2. Anna’s invitation of small talk to other colleagues
6.2.1. Example 3
Frank is at the same rank with Anna, but his working tenure in SHL (HK) is two
years longer than Anna. He works closely with Anna. Presently, Anna serves Frank
with some biscuits.
1 Anna: (hungry)? this is coconut banana biscuit (.)
2 try some? smell good
3 Frank: coconut (2) you buy from supermarket?
4 Anna: no (.) a store selling /South-Asian food\
5 Frank: /(nice taste)\ [sound of eating crispy food]
6 we also do coconut flowers (2) but not (2) popular
7 to our customers (3) you see photos in our database
8 Anna: too many real coconuts (.) no market for /plastic\
9 Frank: /Hah but\ real coconut is () heavy () dangerous
10 Anna: okay (.) let me see the photos first
From lines 1 to 2, Anna invites Frank to try the biscuit she brings back to office.
Frank agrees with a question (line 3), and Anna tells him where the biscuit was
bought (line 4). Based on the development of this small talk, Frank brings a topic
about the business of coconut flowers and suggests Anna browse some photos from
the database (lines 57). After extension of this topic (lines 89), Anna says that she
will see the photos.
This short conversation suggests that while small talk can have its original
function of building rapport with colleagues in the workplace (Holmes and Fillary
2000), it can be extended to work-related talk which involves learning activities for a
newcomer. From lines 1 to 4, Anna starts the small talk by serving something
physically in hand, namely her coconutbanana biscuits. The biscuits function as an
‘instrument’to start the small talk based on the ‘here-and-now.’When asked why she
did so, Anna in the interview said, ‘I bought some feature snacks [i.e. snacks with
Filipino origins] to treat them [i.e. other colleagues], and sometimes they treat me with
Chinese food as well [...] this is common in Filipino workplaces as well.’In terms of
social values, Filipinos desire ‘pakikisama’which is sense of belonging and
hospitability (Selmer and De Leon 2002) by pleasing other people with good things
(Enriquez 1993). Anna appears to transfer the cultural practice in Philippines into
her new workplace, initiating this small talk with the coconut biscuits. This has a
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good match with SHL (HK). Frank in the interview also acknowledged Anna’s
‘effort,’stating that ‘she wants to get more familiar with us. It is normal in our company
[...] will be happier at work.’It seems that the narrower organizational culture of
SHL (HK) allows behavior like this. The reality turns out to be the cultural
resonance which contributes to the successful development of this small talk.
However, the small talk does not end at this point. Part of the topic of the small
talk, coconutbanana biscuits, is picked up by Frank to extend it to be work-related
talk. From lines 5 to 7, Frank changes to talk about the unpopularity of (plastic)
coconut flowers. This can be interpreted as moving from the right end of Holmes’
continuum to the left end. When asked about this move, Frank reported in the
interview, ‘when she says coconuts I thought about our accessories for South-Asian
plants. Maybe she will be interested in them. Then I take the opportunity to let her learn
more.’Indeed, the Hong Kong society normally values short-term achievements
due to the influence of capitalism and tasks implicitly embedded in social activities
due to the preservation of traditional Chinese values (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005;
Mak 2009). Probably thanks to this, Frank suggests Anna go to browse the database
(which is shared repertoire) for some photos. The reality turns out to be his
improvisatory, triggering a learning context and changing the small talk to be work-
related and instructional for a newcomer. Anna also seems to have taken Frank’s
advice at the end of the talk (line 10).
To conclude, Anna launches small talk for fostering solidarity with an integral
member Frank, and the topic is then picked up by Frank as a move toward more
work-related talk for socializing Anna into the workplace. While the first domain is
beneficial to Anna more relationally, the second domain is helpful more transac-
tionally. The whole process is seemingly mediated by or between both Filipino and
Hong Kong cultural values.
6.2.2. Example 4
Anna is following the order of a buyer, and she needs to contact the factory who is
one of SHL’s partners as well. Since Anna has not yet got familiar with the factory,
Gavin, a senior merchandiser and the deputy director of SHL (HK), helps her call
them from time to time. After calling the factory, Gavin gives Anna some task-based
instructions. ‘Mandy’is a contact person of the factory; ‘Ricky’is an assistant
merchandiser who is often absent recently in SHL (HK). He initially worked with
Anna for this buyer.
1 Gavin: so that’s why (.) Mandy (.) Mandy told me (.)
she needs some time to find the ornament
2
and then (.) she will try her best
to give me the price (.) on coming Monday
3
4
5 Anna: Monday
6 Gavin: because I already told her we want cut the (.)
we want to cut off the order this week next week
7
so please give us the price on Monday so we can ask customer
to place an order immediately
8
9
10
11
okay? so this Monday (.)
I think Ricky will come back you can ask Ricky
12 if Ricky not yet come back (.) I have to call Mandy again Hah
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13 Anna: Ricky he has a problem? he’s traveling?
14 Gavin: oh /Ricky\?
15 Anna: /Ricky\
16 Gavin: Ricky is disappeared by some (.) secret Hah
17 Anna: Hah
18 Gavin anyway remember to (chase) the price (.) call and email them (.)
because we have to (send)
19
From lines 1 to 9, Gavin and Anna are engaged in core-business talk; Gavin is
describing the work status regarding the factory. He tells Anna that the proposed
ornaments need changing (lines 12), the price needs further negotiating (lines 34),
and that SHL (HK) has minimized the order (lines 67). These forms the
background for Anna’s following work (lines 89). Then, Gavin asks Anna to
work with Ricky on Monday (lines 1012). At this point, Anna suddenly asks where
Ricky has gone recently, but Gavin seems to give a half-joking response ‘disappeared
by some secret’(i.e. on leave due to some secret) (lines 1316). Afterward, Gavin
quickly goes back to the work-related discussion (lines 1819).
Anna’s initiative of small talk about Ricky suggests that failed initiatives of small
talk can have an impact on socialization into the workplace. When Anna initiates
small talk aiming at Ricky’s leave, Gavin terminates the talk shortly by equivocating
with the response ‘secret.’Anna’s initiative is rejected by his primary superior. At that
time, Gavin is extensively talking about some serious business issues. Rather than short
turns in informal conversations, his long turns from lines 1 to 4 and from lines 6 to 9
suggest the entire conversation to be formal instructions to Anna. In other words, he
sticks to ‘core-business talk’in the left end of Holmes’continuum. Yet, Anna raises
small talk suddenly, which indicates her attachment to the right end of Holmes’
continuum. The question is: what constitutes the different discoursal participation?
When asked why he cut off Anna’s small talk, Gavin commented in the interview,
‘we are not frequent to have unimportant talk [i.e. the first small talk about Ricky’s leave]
when colleagues are engaged in serious business affairs.’He further added, ‘distraction
can cause a great business loss. His (Ricky’s) leave has nothing to do with the current
business.’In fact, the values revealed in his answer are in line with the core value of
the Hong Kong commercial world. Although our representative examples and the
literature have demonstrated that Hong Kong people appreciate small talk in the
workplace for releasing the pressure of money-mindedness, they still stress practic-
ability and immediate achievements in business communication (Wei and Li 2008). The
latter value historically originates from the fact that most early Hong Kong inhabitants
and businessmen did not see Hong Kong as the place of settlement, but only a place
to make money (Luk 1998) or to escape from the communists (Wong 1984). Since
Example 4 occurs in core-business talk associatedwith buying problems, it is reasonable
that Gavin emphasizes the values of doing business and downplays the need to do small
talk (as he said in the interview), then rejecting Anna’s small talk promptly.
Nevertheless, what about Anna’s initiative of small talk? When asked why she
asked about Ricky suddenly, Anna reported in the interview, ‘(I am) just curious
(and) care about him when it comes to his [i.e. Ricky’s] name.’‘Curiosity’and ‘caring
about him’can be partly attributed to the value of relational construction in Filipino
beliefs. In Filipino societies, business productivity and efficient use of time are less
important than relationship management (Francia 1997; Watkins and Gerong 1997).
Probably Anna is attached to this belief, launching the small talk. But still, the reality
128 B.C.N. Mak and H.L. Chui
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turns out to be that curiosity and care are dominated by the need of work in Gavin’s
eyes, and that for Emma, Gavin is a superior, who often enacts power to end small
talk (Holmes 2003). In addition, what a member does not know about a CofP can
indicate his or her membership (Wenger 1998); the result that Gavin does not allow
Anna to know the ‘secret’of Ricky shows that Anna’s small talk in this moment
distances herself from integrating into SHL (HK).
In a nutshell, initiatives of small talk can be negative for Anna’s socialization
into the workplace. When inappropriately initiated, the talk will be terminated by
integral members, which reifies her new membership and lack of workplace
knowledge. Such an inappropriate initiation and the termination can be associated
with the inconsistence between different cultural values.
7. Discussion and conclusion
Small talk is a common symbolic activity which constitutes both transactional
and relational meanings to the workplace. The examples portray Anna as a reserved
but sometimes proactive expatriate to Hong Kong and a newcomer integrating into
SHL (HK). She was slightly different from traditional Filipinos whose communi-
cation is usually motivated by the desire to be accepted within a small group
(Rowthorn and Bloom 2006). On the whole, she tended to participate in small talk
differently from other integral members in SHL (HK). Their distinct discoursal
participation embodies a different membership in the workplace (Drew 2002;
Wenger, McDermott, and Snyder 2002) and creates the reality of the discourse of
small talk (Shi-xu 2005). Additionally, the examples contained workplace discourse
which met Holmes’(2000b) continuum in that any categories of talk were often fluid
along the continuum. Such a phenomenon of small talk implicitly interplayed with
specific cultural norms or values, which contribute to variations in the participants’
knowledge, thoughts, comprehension, and intended outcomes of participation.
Anna participated in small talk by both responding to the integral members
and taking the initiative. In both situations, she appeared to manipulate different
unique values or beliefs in Filipino societies as her beacon of moves along Holmes’
(2000b) continuum. The move could be positive or negative to her socialization
into the workplace, because the Filipino values or beliefs were not necessarily
applicable in Hong Kong or SHL (HK). Therefore, our first finding is that small talk
in the workplace is a double-edged sword of newcomer cultural ideology. When a
newcomer participates inappropriately due to his or her own cultural ideology, the
small talk may hinder workplace socialization and distance the newcomer from the
integral members. The negative discoursal outcomes symbolize new membership
in the new workplace and incompetence in cultural intelligence (Chen, Lin, and
Sawangpattanakal 2011). On the other hand, when a newcomer has appropriate
participation with collaboration with the integral members, small talk is one means
to transition from being new to being integral in the workplace. Even the most
conventional small talk may not be universal. Therefore, we suggest that, owing to
the fluidity of talk and space for negotiation in the workplace (Holmes 2000b), a
newcomer needs to consider his or her own cultural values and those of integral
members so as to recognize the mutually accepted ways to participate.
Integrated members’participation in small talk could be interpreted as a
schemata to indicate if Anna’s performance was appropriate according to the
organizational culture and the broader home culture of existing employees. SHL
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(HK), as a CofP, had organizationally defined patterns of small talk as a kind of
shared repertoire. Simultaneously, its members were Hong Kong Chinese who
maintained or utilized Hong Kong core values to do, to transform, to reject, or to
avoid doing small talk. Our second finding, hence, is that small talk provides evidence,
being indicative of positive or negative socialization into a workplace CofP. The
evidence is not only based on organizational cultures, but also the cultural ideology
of the integral CofP members. We then suggest that the integrated members, who
perform small talk adhering to the organizational and/or ethnical norms, play the
role of helping newcomers participate and passing such undocumented norms as well
as other workplace information to them. This, on the other hand, constitutes integral
members’membership themselves and sustains the CofP itself as well.
Since modern workplaces are sustained by both existing members and new-
comers, workplace socialization seems to be a process which happens in social
interactions before moving to the individual dimension. During small talk, new and
integrated colleagues co-construct the discourse on the basis of their individual
sociocultural background, adherence to the CofP norms, and intention for the
current conversational goal. Small talk hence may be seen as a double-edged sword of
sociocultural reality which is carried by both newcomers and existing members during
workplace socialization. Small talk is a means for a newcomer to catalyze rapport
development; small talk is also a means for existing colleagues to acknowledge their
acceptance of a newcomer. Nevertheless, owing to the variable interplay between
cultural consideration and discourse reality, there seems to be no guarantee that the
tactic must be productive. This is why we call it ‘double-edged.’
This study is academic in nature, but it provides several insights about workplace
mentoring. First, small talk, similar to humor, is a domain of shared repertoire in many
workplace CofPs (Mak, Liu, and Deneen 2012). Developing small-talk skills of
expatriate colleagues, who do not share the sociocultural background with existing
CofP members, is important in mentoring (Marra and Holmes 2007). These expatriates
tend to suffer from culture shock which can cause communication problems (Chen,
Lin, and Sawangpattanakal 2011). Mentors can pass the genres of small talk and their
general cultural customs to newcomers in advance, so as to avoid any conversational
tension or embarrassment. Secondly, our case study portrays a picture in which small
talk can develop from or to different points along Holmes’(2000b) continuum. This
also suggests that small talk can provide both career and psychosocial support to
newcomers (Ehrich and Hansford 1999) in mentoring activities which are scaffolded by
more experienced integral members (Townley 1994). In such activities, integral
members can pay more attention to their own small talk which provides cues for
newcomers to anticipate it, so as to maximize the mentoring outcomes.
As concluding remarks, we address our two research questions. In the
socialization dimension, we argue that small talk with integral members can trigger
positive or negative evidence to indicate if a newcomer has behaved appropriately in
the CofP and is socializing into the workplace. Small talk can occur or end
irregularly and spontaneously along the continuum of workplace talk in Holmes
(2000b), and it can be realized in different forms. In the culture dimension, we argue
that small talk is a double-edged sword for both newcomers and integrated
colleagues. This sword is a culturally created product which can be phatic or gauche,
useful or harmful. These findings are especially important for workplaces in
multicultural societies in the non-Western world (Shi-xu 2009), such as Hong
Kong, where workplace talk frequently appears in social settings and independent of
130 B.C.N. Mak and H.L. Chui
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official rules (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005). The local and non-local identities,
together with the online and offline interaction, may even make the workplace
discourse in these societies more complex (Ladegaard 2012). Therefore, more studies
are needed to give insight into various linguistic dimensions of workplace
socialization involving different stakeholders with diversified sociocultural back-
ground (Mak, Liu, and Deneen 2012).
Acknowledgements
We thank all participants who allowed their workplace talk to be audio-recorded and agreed
to be interviewed. We are also grateful to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for all
suggestions and/or comments on our work. We especially want to thank Prof. Janet Holmes
and Pearson Education for granting permission to use of the continuum of talk in Holmes
(2000b). Finally, we have to express our gratitude to Miss April Liu Yiqi, who provided
feedback on an earlier version of this article.
Notes on contributors
Bernie Chun Nam Mak is a PhD student at the Department of English, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong. He holds a BA and an MPhil in Language and Communication.
Bernie has published and given talks on workplace discourse (including computer-mediated
workplace discourse) with regard to humor, small talk, socialization, gender, and power-
identity construction.
Hin Leung Chui is a teaching fellow at the Department of Mathematics and Information
Technology, The Hong Kong Institute of Education. His research interests include content
analysis methods, knowledge construction in personalized and social environments, identity
development in professional settings, and teaching and learning (including teacher education)
in new media.
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Appendix 1. Transcription conventions (modified from Holmes and Stubbe 2003, 181)
yes it’s Original speech
Hah Laughter
(.) Minor pause (of up to one second)
(3) Longer pause (of up to two seconds or above; the number insider the brackets
indicates the length of the pause)
.../...\... Overlap (which originates from simultaneous speech)
.../...\...
( ) Unclear utterance
(yeah) Unclear utterance based on transcriber’s best guess
? A question or rising intonation
I see bu- Incomplete or cut-off speech
[walking
sound]
Transcriber’s additional information in square brackets
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