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jayles the unblessed
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May 28, 2016
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Small Talk—Countable or Uncountable?
- May 28, 2016, 3:55pm
It would be relatively unusual to make 'small talk' countable; one could say "She gave a small talk on ....", but that would be using the phrase in its literal meaning.
"Small talk" usually means talking about the weather, some football game, the latest shade of lipstick (or whatever women consider inconsequential) , or some other non-weighty matters.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=+*+small+talk&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t2%3B%2C*%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bof%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bthe%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Band%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bin%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bmake%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bfor%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bno%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bmaking%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bmade%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0%3B%3Bwith%20small%20talk%3B%2Cc0
Small Talk—Countable or Uncountable?
Oh, that didn't seem to work very well.
The main point is the verb to use with 'small talk' is 'make'. Eg We made small talk while waiting for the bus to come.
'I had a small talk with someone' to me suggests that there is some issue or grievance which needs to be settled in private; but possibly it is not used in this way in the US (or, who knows, by presidential candidates of the non-presidential variety ).