Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Of or relating to communication used to perform a social function rather than to convey information or ideas.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective linguistics Pertaining to words used to convey any kind of social relationship e.g polite mood, rather than meaning; for example, "How are you?" is often not a literal question but is said only as a greeting. (Similarly, a response such as "Fine" is often not an accurate answer, but merely an acknowledgement of the greeting.)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Weed was the reason girls selected clothes based on fuzziness, the reason boys sounded dumb, the reason we inflected every sentence as a question and usedlike andyou know as phatic communications.
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Weed was the reason girls selected clothes based on fuzziness, the reason boys sounded dumb, the reason we inflected every sentence as a question and usedlike andyou know as phatic communications.
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The phatic is then the point at which language opens human being to the natural world (which, for shamanic cultures, is simply a larger assemblage of "people").
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Recapitulating phylogeny as ontogeny, Jakobson states that the phatic is "the first verbal function acquired by infants; they are prone to communicate before being able to send or receive informative communication" (356).
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This has some interesting ramifications, I think, for what Jakobson refers to as the phatic function, what other linguists have referred to as the relational or contact function, what I'm calling the connective function.
Notes on Strange Fiction: Narrative's Function (3) Hal Duncan 2008
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This has some interesting ramifications, I think, for what Jakobson refers to as the phatic function, what other linguists have referred to as the relational or contact function, what I'm calling the connective function.
Archive 2008-09-01 Hal Duncan 2008
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You might even sense that responses like "sure," "anytime," or "no problem" - as well as "you're welcome" itself - are what linguists call phatic communications, words that don't really convey information so much as they perform a social role.
Boston Globe -- Ideas section Erin McKean 2010
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Jakobson derived the term "phatic" (for communications that foreground the contact) from Malinowski's work on meaning in "primitive" languages.
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I'm not acquainted with literary theory, and my academic training is in the rather different fields of hard science and history (where the words "polysemic" and "phatic" are not often used), so when I read books like this I am not really looking to participate in the intellectual debate that the author may want to have.
May Books 19) Rhetorics of Fantasy, by Farah Mendlesohn nwhyte 2009
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We might be better asking, then, whether the apparent redundancy of much phatic communion may in fact reflect another function, that of compensating for the acts of initiation and termination which are necessary parts of all conversations simply because all conversations are finite, limited by circumstance.
Notes on Strange Fiction: Narrative's Function (3) Hal Duncan 2008
misterpolly commented on the word phatic
I am a great fan of "phatic communion" - conversational exchanges with almost no meaning ("Nice weather for this time of the year!") just to show that you care enough to say something.
December 18, 2007
roseandivy commented on the word phatic
It is so unappealing, but it has such a great meaning. Pity.
March 3, 2008
johnmperry commented on the word phatic
Or as Marshall McLuhan has it, "the medium is the message."
August 25, 2008
garyth123 commented on the word phatic
i am so non-phatic:)
December 23, 2008
cryptofascistbbq commented on the word phatic
denoting speech used to express or create an atmosphere of shared feelings, goodwill, or sociability rather than to impart information: phatic communion.
July 14, 2009