Amall Talk

8/28/2009

Small talk, gossip and tall stories: Using AAC socially

Jane Farrall
Speech Pathologist AAC Support Services Manager

Good afternoon

How are you all?

Have you had a good morning?

Do you wanna hear some gossip?

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It s It’s good.

It s It’s really, really good!

Have you got anything to tell me?

Something from this morning?

OK, here’s mygossip… here s

You ll You’ll never guess…

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Kelly Fonner isn t here! isn’t

Small talk, gossip and tall stories: Using AAC socially

Social Communication
• Social communication is a BIG part o ou day of our day. • We use different forms of social communication – small talk, storytelling, greetings, wrap ups and farewells.

Social Communication
• Social communication ismore than 50% of our daily conversation. • Light (1998) found that reasons for communication between adults were (in ranked order)
• • • • Social closeness Social etiquette Information transfer Wants and Needs

What do AAC users usually have on their system?
• Many AAC users have vocabulary which has been chosen to meet the needs of specific situations. These can have a large number ofsituation specific nouns and a very small number (or none) of small talk items. They may also include some wrap ups or control words e.g. finish and more.

So…. Let’s get more social! S L t’ t i l!

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Small Talk
• •

Small Talk
A type of conversational exchange used for initiating and maintaining conversational interaction. Some conversation never progresses beyond small talke.g. at a cocktail party. p y

Small Talk
• Small talk is used as a transition between the greeting and information sharing stage, especially when people don’t p know each other well or don’t possess a lot of shared information. • Small talk is often the first step towards social closeness. • A quick check at Amazon showed 16 books aimed at helping people improve their small talk skills. Including“How to get people to like you in 90 seconds”. • There are even websites to teach you how to small talk! e.g. www.ehow.com, www.englishclub.com, www.ivillage.co.uk and many more!

AAC Users and Small Talk
• Many AAC users use little or no small talk • This can be because
• They don t have access to small talk in their communication don’t system • They don’t see the need for it • They think itis a waste of time.

• Light and Binger (1998) found that AAC users were seen as more intelligent, valued and competent communication partners if they used small talk.

Generic Small Talk
• Generic small talk is small talk that people can use with a variety of different conversational partners i l because it doesn’t refer to specific shared information. Particularly effective for many AACusers as it has many different uses. Generic Small Talk y How is your family? What’s happening? Don’t you look nice! She’s great. Specific Small Talk How is your y wife? What are you doing? Nice haircut. She’s a great teacher.

Generic Small Talk
• Several groups of researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln looked at the frequency and types of g generic small talk used by speakers ofvarious ages without y p g disabilities. • 3 – 5 year olds - 48% of all utterances at both home and pre-school/school were generic small talk • 20 – 30 year olds - 39% of all utterances were generic small talk • 65 – 74 year olds – 31% of all utterances were generic small talk • 75 – 85 year olds – 26% of all utterances were generic small talk

•

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Generic Small Talk
• Most ofthe age groups used continuers as the most common form of small talk. • Really? Yeah? Great! Cool! • Go to aac.unl.edu for more detailed information.

Differences in Small Talk Vocabulary
• The small talk vocabulary lists showed that some words were used more frequently than others e.g. OK • Some words were common across all age groups e.g. great • Some words were specific to certain age...