Phatic communion | ScienceGate

Until recently, German linguists seemed not very interested in chatting as a type of discourse. Today, sending mails and SMS-messages as well as chatting are common ways of electronic communication and, therefore, new objects of linguistic investigation. The following paper gives a short outline of current research on chatting and, based on material collected by Swiss students, discusses forms and functions of chatting as a new media specific type of discourse somewhere between letter and conversation. What the various forms described have in common are the technical conditions of communication and its specific setting. Chatting is regarded as a hybrid medium between written text and spoken language. This leads to some theoretical and structural consequences for the textual mode of this sort of dialogue. They need further analysis and empirical observation. This applies also to their sociolinguistic aspects of the specific jargon used and their functional aspects of phatic communion comparing chats and everyday conversations.

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Translating phatic expressions

Pragmatics ◽

10.1075/prag.21.1.02qin ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 23-39 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jamal B.S. al-Qinai

Keyword(s):

Social Status ◽

Social Environment ◽

Small Talk ◽

Break Up ◽

Informative Content ◽

Phatic Communion

Any conversational exchange can be informational or phatic. Occasional exchanges are of no lesser importance than the informative content of dialogue. One needs to establish the channel of communication by setting up a social environment conducive to the exchange of ideas among the participants. Such a strategy of showing politeness is intended to avoid face-threatening acts through the use of compliments and non-verbal gestures. Mistranslating the function of a given phatic communion expression might lead to problems ranging from the disruption of mundane daily small talk such as the break up of a courtship dialogue to grave consequences as the failure of crucial peace talks among belligerent nations. The paper explores the effect of misinterpreting culturally divergent phatic communion formulae in an English-Arabic context. Other sociolinguistic parameters such as topic, setting, age, sex and social status will be considered.

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Between phatic communion and coping tactic. Casamançais multilingual practices

10.31235/osf.io/pnv5h ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Tilmann HEIL

Keyword(s):

Cultural Differences ◽

Linguistically Diverse ◽

Small Talk ◽

Structural Forces ◽

Living Together ◽

Local Residents ◽

And Coping ◽

Phatic Communion

This paper enquires into the role of multilingual practices in conviviality in shared, socially and culturally mixed localities. I ask how Casamançais use diverse repertoires to get by in everyday life in both Casamance, Senegal and Catalonia, Spain. The concept of conviviality stresses fragile, dynamic processes characteristic of everyday ways of living together with maintained difference. I argue that minimal, but diversified language practices, which compose linguistically diverse repertoires, are central in facilitating conviviality among local residents. Minimal interactions and ‘small talk’, or phatic communion, cushion potentially conflictual socio-cultural differences and inequalities. Firstly, I will evaluate discourses on multilingual practices of Casamançais in both contexts. Second, I will critically explore the reasons for and quality of the widespread use of diverse repertoires. I conclude that multilingual practices facilitate phatic communion sometimes playfully and sometimes as part of coping strategies in situations in which structural forces determine which choices will be more successful than others. The process of conviviality spans both these aspects describing ever-dynamic and ever-fragile ways of living with difference.

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“How are you?”: Negotiating phatic communion

Language in Society ◽

10.1017/s0047404500015268 ◽

1992 ◽

Vol 21 (2) ◽

pp. 207-230 ◽

Cited By ~ 108

Author(s):

Justine Coupland ◽

Nikolas Coupland ◽

Jeffrey D. Robinson

Keyword(s):

Medical Research ◽

Conversation Analysis ◽

Preference Structure ◽

Small Talk ◽

Social Settings ◽

Phatic Communion

ABSTRACTSince its introduction by Malinowski in the 1920s, “phatic communion” has often been appealed to as a concept in sociolinguistics, semantics, stylistics, and communication, typically taken to designate a conventionalized and desemanticized discourse mode or “type.” But a negotiation perspective, following the conversation analysis tradition of research on greetings and troubles telling, fits the discursive realities better. Phaticity is a multidimensional potential for talk in many social settings, where speakers' relational goals supercede their commitment to factuality and instrumentality. We then analyze phatic processes in elderly people's responses to a scripted how are you? opening in interviews about their medical experiences. Discourse analyses of phatic communion can raise important issues for gerontological and medical research. (Phatic communion, small talk, greetings, elderly talk, medical talk, preference structure)

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