Topical Guide 804
Mark Dorset
Communication: Phatic Function
At Home with the Glynns, Chapter 6:
Margot spoke into the mouthpiece again, to me: “He won’t let us walk to the movies alone. He wants to drive us there and then pick us up.”
“Yeah,” I said, using it merely as one of the phatic remarks a listener makes to assure a speaker that he is functioning in the role of listener and hasn’t slipped into another role—sleeper, for example, or uninterested party.
Wikipedia, “Phatic Communication”:
Roman Jakobson defined six functions of language (or communication functions), according to which an effective act of verbal communication can be described.[2] Each of the functions has an associated factor. For this work, Jakobson was influenced by Karl Bühler’s organon model, to which he added the poetic, phatic, and metalingual functions. […]
The phatic function: is language for the sake of interaction and is therefore associated with the Contact/Channel factor. The Phatic Function can be observed in greetings and casual discussions of the weather, particularly with strangers. It also provides the keys to open, maintain, verify or close the communication channel: “Hello?” “Ok?” “Hummm” “Bye” . . .
See also:
Communication: Signal and Noise TG 67, TG 629; Communication: Nonverbal: Smoking TG 536
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