【词汇大师】幸福的人生不闲聊（1/2）

英语自学网

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身边有的人特别喜欢“small talk”, "small talk"是神马？这跟“幸福”有啥关系？
TIPS
本篇对话中，主持人的对话不需要听写，只需听写嘉宾的话
主持人对话①"Just as an aside, is small talk -- is it a universal?"
主持人对话②"Why did you do this current study? Why were you interested in happiness as related to small talk or substantive talk?"
HINTS
University of Texas
questionnaire

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"We defined it as an uninvolved conversation of a banal nature that’s trivial in the amount of information that is exchanged."
"I think small talk is universal in the sense that everybody has small talk, but the way small talk works may be different between cultures. I remember one of the first days at the office where I was working back then at the University of Texas. And after a while it became clear to me that I was coming off as pretty rude. I was thinking about that and it occurred to me that the reason why I was coming off as pretty rude -- which by the way I guess nicely fits the German stereotype -- is because I didn’t know how to do small talk in English.
"And so when I requested some information from a fellow grad student I said ’Hey, by the way, do you have that survey, do you have that questionnaire?’ And what I should have said is ’Well, how was your weekend? Did you have a good time? What did you do? Yeah, I’m working on this study and I was wondering whether maybe you could provide me with this questionnaire."