small talk

Small talk is an informal type of discourse that does not cover any functional topics of conversation or any transactions that need to be addressed. In essence, it is polite and standard conversation about unimportant things. The phenomenon of small talk was initially studied in 1923 by Bronisław Malinowski in his essay "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages", who coined the term "phatic communication" to describe it. The ability to conduct small talk is a social skill.