Phatic expression


In linguistics, a phatic expression is communication which serves a social function, such as social pleasantries that don't seek or offer information of intrinsic value but can signal willingness to observe conventional local expectations for politeness. Phatic expressions are a socio-pragmatic function and are used in everyday conversational exchange typically expressed in situational instances that call for social cues. In speech communication the term means "small talk" and has also been called "grooming talking."
For example, greetings such as "hello", "how are you?", and "good afternoon" are all phatic expressions. In phatic expressions, speech acts are not communicative, since no content is communicated. According to anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, apparently "purposeless" speech acts—polite small talk, like "how are you?" or "have a nice day"—even though their content may be trivial or irrelevant to the situation, perform the important function of establishing, maintaining, and managing bonds of sociality between participants.
In Roman Jakobson's work, the 'phatic' function of language concerns the channel of communication; for instance, when one says "I can't hear you, you're breaking up" in the middle of a cell-phone conversation. This usage appears in research on online communities and micro-blogging.

History

The term phatic communion was coined by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski in his essay "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages", which appeared in 1923 as a supplementary contribution to The Meaning of Meaning by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards. The term "phatic" means "linguistic" and comes from the Greek φατός phatós, from φημί phēmí.

Phatic expressions in various languages

Danish

Danish has several phatic greetings:
Some phatic greetings are only used in writings such as letters, e-mails and speeches read aloud:
Some greetings like hej can be used throughout the day. Some are more specific, and the specific time of when to switch to the next greeting can vary from speaker to speaker. But in general the time-specific greetings are:
Godmorgen 'good morning', around 6 AM - 10 AM
God formiddag literally 'good pre-noon', around 9 AM - 12 AM
Goddag 'good day', around 10 AM - 6 PM
God eftermiddag 'good afternoon', around 1 PM - 6 PM
Godaften 'good evening', around 6 PM - 12 PM
Godnat 'good night', said whenever the listener is going to go to sleep.
Thanking:
Wishes:
Initial greetings
, mouth movement: /hej/ or /dav/ or nothing. Used as a standard greeting equivalent to English hi.
, mouth movement: /bibi/. When repeated twice the sign can be translated as 'is everything going well?'.
Farewells
, mouth movement: /farvel/. The sign means 'goodbye' and looks like waving.

English

"You're welcome", in its phatic usage, is not intended to convey the message that the hearer is welcome; it is a phatic response to being thanked, which in turn is a phatic whose function is to acknowledge the receipt of a benefit.
Similarly, the question "how are you?" is usually an automatic component of a social encounter. Although there are times when "how are you?" is asked in a sincere, concerned manner and does in fact anticipate a detailed response regarding the respondent's present state, this needs to be pragmatically inferred from context and intonation.
Example: a simple, basic exchange between two acquaintances in a non-formal environment:
Or:
In both dialogs neither speaker expects an actual answer to the question but rather it is an indication that each has recognized the other's presence and has therefore sufficiently performed that particular social duty.

Icelandic

There are several phatic greetings in Icelandic differing in formality:
Thanking:
In Japanese, phatic expressions play a significant role in communication, for instance the backchannel responses referred to as aizuchi. Other such expressions include the ubiquitous Yoroshiku onegaishimasu, Otsukaresama desu and Osewa ni natteimasu.

Persian

is a complex set of expressions and other gestures in Persian society, primarily reflected in the language.

Welsh

In Welsh the general phatic is a regional and colloquial version of sut mae?. The general pronounciation in southern Wales is shw mae and in the North, su' mae. The usual answer is iawn or, iawn, diolch maybe the more traditional, go lew, go lew, diolch.
The use of "sut mae" phatic has been used as a Welsh language campaigners to encourage Welsh-speakers to begin conversations in Welsh, and for non-fluent speakers to "give it a go". Shwmae Sumae Day was held for the first time in 2013 and is held annually on 13 October.

In Fiction

Phatic expressions are often created by authors, particularly in science fiction or fantasy, as part of their worldbuilding.
Non-verbal phatic expressions are used in nonverbal communication for emphasis or to add detail to the message that a person conveys or expresses. Common examples of these are smiling, gesturing, waving, etc. According to Dr. Carola Surkamp, professor at University of Cologne, non-verbal phatic communication can be expressed with involuntary physical features such as direction of gaze, blushing, posture, etc. and that these have a vital function in regulating conversation.

Online phatic expressions

Phatic expressions are used on different communication platforms on the internet such as social media networks where certain platforms require and prompt certain actions to be made between users to communicate or implicate certain messages between people without direct utterances. Examples for this would be: 'likes', comments/replies, shares/reblogs, emoji use, etc. These phatic posts as Radovanovic and Ragnedda like to call them, are again used with a social function of social communicative upkeep with the primary function of expressing social connection, relationships between users, and recognition of coparticipants.