Phatic Communication

For most of us, an average day is filled with phatic communication and we never even notice it. In
fact, spending 24 hours without any form of this communication would probably seem very foreign
and unnatural. Imagine spending an entire day without making small talk with your family,
answering the telephone with the word "hello," telling someone to have a nice day, or discussing the
weather with a new client. These cliched phrases and time-worn conversation starters are perfect
examples of phatic communication.
Phatic communication can be verbal or non-verbal. A simple wave at a co-worker or a thumbs up
signal to a friend are non-verbal examples, in the same way a routine conversation at the bank
would qualify as a verbal one. We may call it small talk, but in reality we would all be lost without this
form of communication.

Sociologists who study the art of human communication suggest that small talk, such as discussing
the weather, opens up a social channel. This, in turn, can lead to more substantial or factual
communication. Very few people start and end conversations with straight facts — phatic
communication such as a handshake helps set the stage first.

The current Internet chatroom environment is a sterling example of this. The introduction of a new
chatroom participant is often perfunctory and ritualized, allowing chatters to ease into social
conversations without the pressure to be informative or fact-driven.

Phatic communication is also found every day in the workplace. Receptionists use routine greetings
to begin and end phone conversations. Co-workers often have social "water cooler" conversations
about common events or issues. Much of our daily work routines revolves around these seemingly
trivial moments of social communication.

While it is important to develop effective phatic communication skills, one must also recognize
varying degrees of comfort with the process. Some people are simply not comfortable with the idea
of making meaningless small talk. Others seem to embrace the social ritual, even to the point of
avoiding much factual conversation with others.

Communication experts suggest finding a middle ground, using phatic communication as a means to
open up more substantial conversation. Too much emphasis on small talk can make a person seem
unfocused or chatty, while too little can make someone appear stern or unapproachable. The trick
lies in finding a proper balance between phatic and factual communication.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-phatic-communication.htm
By Richard Nordquist http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/phaticterm.htm
24/4/2014

Small talk: the nonreferential use of language to share feelings or

establish a mood of sociability rather than to communicate information or
ideas; ritualized formulas intended to attract the attention of the listener
or prolong communication.
The term phatic communion was coined by British anthropologist Bronislaw
Malinowski in his essay "The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages,"
which appeared in 1923 in The Meaning of Meaning by C.K. Ogden and I.A.
Richards.

Etymology:

From the Greek, "spoken"

Examples and Observations:

 "How are you?"

"How are you doing?"
"Have a nice day!"
"Cold enough for you?"
"This train is really crowded."
"What's your sign?"
"What's your major?"
"Do you come here often?"
"Sincerely yours"
"How about those Mets?"
"Some weather we're having."

 "Speech to promote human warmth: that is as good a definition as any of the phatic aspect of
language. For good or ill, we are social creatures and cannot bear to be cut off too long from
our fellows, even if we have nothing really to say to them."
(Anthony Burgess, Language Made Plain. English Universities Press, 1964)
 "Phatic communication refers also to trivial and obvious exchanges about the weather and
time, made up of ready-made sentences or foreseeable statements. . . . Therefore this is a type
of communication that establishes a contact without transmitting a precise content, where the
container is more important then the content."
(F. Casalegno and I.M. McWilliam, "Communication Dynamics in Technological Mediated
Learning Environments." International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance
Learning, Nov. 2004)

 "Phatic communication, or small talk, is an important social lubricant. In the words of

Erving Goffman, 'The gestures which we sometimes call empty are perhaps in fact the fullest
things of all.'"
(Diana Boxer, Applying Sociolinguistics. John Benjamins, 2002)

 "[The] strictly rhetorical, 'phatic' purpose of 'keeping in touch' for the sake of keeping in
touch [is] best illustrated by the 'uh-huh' that lets the listener on the other end of a telephone
connection know that we are still there and with him."
(W. Ross Winterowd, Rhetoric: A Synthesis. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1968)

 "'Nice weather we're having' is perfect, Leonard. It's a subject that lends itself to speculation
about future weather, discussion of past weather. Something everyone knows about. It doesn't
matter what you say, it's just a matter of keeping the ball rolling till you both feel comfortable.
Eventually if they're at all interested you'll get through to them."
(Phil in the one-act play Potholes by Gus Kaikkonen, 1984)

 Attitude and Presence

"[P]hatic utterances constitute a mode of action just in their being voiced. In short, a phatic
utterance communicates not ideas but attitude, the speaker's presence, and the speaker's
intention of being sociable."
(Brooks Landon, Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to
Read. Plume, 2013)
 Kenneth Burke on "Pure Persuasion"
"What the anthropologist Malinowski called 'phatic communion' might seem close to
'purepersuasion.' He referred to talk at random, purely for the satisfaction of talking together,
the use of speech as such for the establishing of a social bond between speaker and spoken-to.
Yet 'pure persuasion' should be much more intensely purposive than that, though it would be a
'pure' purpose, a kind of purpose which, as judged by the rhetoric of advantage, is no purpose
at all, or which might often look like sheer frustration of purpose."
(Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950)