In what measure sociability realizes to the full the abstraction of the forms of sociological interaction otherwise significant because of their content and gives them—now turning about themselves, so to speak—a shadow body is revealed finally in that most extensive instrument of all human common life, conversation. The decisive point is expressed in the quite banal experience that in the serious affairs of life men talk for the sake of the content which they wish to impart or about which they want to come to an understanding—in sociability talking is an end in itself; in purely sociable conversation the content is merely the indispensable carrier of the stimulation, which the lively exchange of talk as such unfolds.

XREF: Connects to conversational analysis, theories of phatic communication, and Bourdieu's analysis of sociability as a cultivated practice. SEED: Offers an angle on why certain talk feels 'light' vs 'weighted' — the distinction between means-oriented and end-in-itself conversation could anchor an essay on modern networking culture.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 381