Stories Related to Surviving Holiday Small Talk

After he returned from his famous tour through the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville noted that the nation’s residents did not seem to posses the gift of gab. “An American cannot converse,” he wrote, “but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation.” Bernardo Carducci, a psychology professor at Indiana University Southeast and an expert in small talk, might say that the people de Tocqueville encountered made a rookie conversation mistake: Talking too much and too long about one’s favorite topics.