phatic
Pronunciation
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Pronunciation
- IPA: /ˈfætɪk/
phatic
- (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.)
- 1978, Anthony Burgess, 1985:
- Generally speaking, statements in WE are expected to be of a tautologous nature, thus fulfilling the essential phatic nature of speech.
- 2006, Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day, Vintage 2007, p. 467:
- Dispensing with phatic chitchat, he began straightaway to tell the story of his “people.”
- 1978, Anthony Burgess, 1985:
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.003