ABSTRACT
In 1923 Malinowski proposed the name phatic communion (Gk. phasis, “utterance”) for a complex type of speech activity “in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words” (emphasis added, 1956:315). Malinowski’s presentation of the idea, as we shall see, was highly nuanced, covering a range of verbal forms (including some folklore genres) whose purpose he conceived to be the sharing of identity. The word phatic was later used by Jakobson (1960, further discussion to follow) to refer to one of the six functions in his taxonomy of discourse types: the phatic function is served when speech is oriented to the contact between addresser and addressee. Following Jakobson’s lead, subsequent research has moved away from the notion of communion to a concern with function and discourse types in which the order of priorities is reversed. “An utterance,” says Bakhtin, “is a link in the chain of speech communion” (1986:84). Rather than speaking subjects who use languge to create bonds of union and identity with others, in the functional model language casts speaking subjects into roles as addressers, or senders, and addressees, or receivers, of information. Coupland et al summarize the situation thus: “… phatic communion remains an often appealed to but underanalyzed term in an implicit taxonomy of discourse ‘types’” (1992:207). Current linguistic thought on the subject has diminished Jakobson’s concept even further by focusing mostly on vacuous exchanges, small talk (Schneider, 1988) or casual conversation (Ventola, 1979). Coupland et al confirm this state of affairs: “In the many later [post Malinowski] uses of the term phatic communion, it is the negative valuation that predominates, particularly when talk is analyzed to be referentially deficient and communicatively insignificant” (1992:207; see also their summary of the scholarship on this “consensus” definition of phatic communion, pp. 210–211, as well as Schneider’s summary, 1988:23–39 and his “working model of small talk,” pp. 39–40). In some cases the emphasis on the communicative content of speech acts has led to a total reversal of the original understanding of phatic communion as creating bonds of union. In Fawcett’s model of communication, for example (1984:42), which divides all discourse into two types, straight and oblique, the function of creating solidarity and closeness (in our words “ties of union”) is assigned to “straight” speech, which does not have a phatic component, as opposed to “oblique” speech, which does (1984:44). There are of course exceptions, the most important being Leech and Halliday. Leech also attributes to Malinowski the understanding of phatic communion as “the activity of talking merely to preserve sociability” (emphasis added, 1983:141), but in postulating a “metalinguistic maxim of politeness,” which he calls the “Phatic Maxim,” he accords phatic communion a higher status in the pragmatics of communication than others I have so far cited. The significance of this maxim is that it stresses the act of communication, with the implication that it is the most fundamental aspect of language use. Leech rightly perceived that silence poses a problem when human beings are in social contact. Hence the phatic maxim, formulated in its positive form as “Keep talking,” or in the negative as “Avoid silence” (1983:141). Halliday is in substantial agreement with this understanding of phatic communion as a significant aspect of human language use: “Perhaps our most purely operational language activity is phatic communion, the language of the establishment and maintenance of social relations” (Halliday 1964:91, cited in de Joia and Smith, 1980:48). With the exceptions to be discussed at the end, folklorists too appear to have accepted the interpretation of phatic communion as small talk with no relation to the traditional expressive genres that form the subject of their inquiry, and have largely ignored it.
