phatic act [Grk phátis ‘speech’]

In J.L.Austin’s speech act theory, a phatic act consists in the production of words and strings of words in a particular construction with a particular intonation. Together with the phonetic act (=utterance of speech sounds) and the rhetic act (=use of words with a certain meaning, i.e. a certain sense and a certain reference), the phatic a ct is subsumed under the locutionary act (locution).