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Part of
Politeness in Professional Contexts
Edited by Dawn Archer, Karen Grainger and Piotr Jagodziński
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 311] 2020
► pp. 273–298

Chapter 12
Keeping airports safe

The value of small talk

| Manchester Metropolitan University | EIA Group
| EIA Group
| EIA Group
Keywords: airport interaction, Air Marshalls (AMs), Behavioural Detection Officers (BDOs), covert surveillance and interactions, face(work), mutual face enhancement, phatic veil, security, small talk, transactional talk
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The (linguistic) characteristics of small talk
  • 3.Engaging with others in airport settings: Some fictional illustrations
  • 4.The different types of “small talk” in airport settings
  • 5.EIA behavioural detection programme
  • 6.Comparing social engineering techniques with alternative covert elicitation techniques based on small talk
  • 7.Small talk as a phatic veil for transactional work: Some closing observations
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.311.12arc
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