Phatic Communion In English

1. Introduction

“When two Englishmen meet their first talk is of the weather”, the English writer Samuel Johnson once noted in an issue of The Idler (as cited in Bubel, 2006, p. 245). This talk about uncontroversial topics such as the weather is known as phatic communion. The term was coined by Bronislaw Malinowksi in 1923 and describes “a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words” (Malinowksi, 2006, p. 297). Therefore, phatic communion serves a social function and is used to establish and maintain a relation between interlocutors. However, the importance of this talk varies in different discourse systems. For instance, in Britain, phatic or small talk is commonly used to maintain social relationships (Bubel,

Indeed, Juliane House (2006) identifies five dimensions that illustrate these differences: directness and indirectness, orientation towards self and towards other, orienta-tion towards content and towards addressees, explicitness and implicitness, and ad-hoc formulations and verbal routines (pp. 251-252). English speakers prefer a level of indirectness and would ask “Would you like to go to the cinema tonight?” instead of directly saying that they would like to go to the cinema (House, 2006, p. 255). In contrast, German speakers prefer directness and would use an imperative form such as “Öffne bitte das Fenster.” (“Open the window please.”) instead of indirectly asking “Would you mind opening the window?” (House, 2006, p. 255). Furthermore, in an English context, there is an increased orientation towards the other. For example, at the market or in supermarkets, the salesperson may start the conversation with, “Good morning, how are you?” (House, 2006, p. 256). However, in a German context the same conversation may start with, “Wer ist der nächste?” (“Who is next?”) without any phatic communion and, hence, there is an increased orientation towards the self rather than the interlocutor (House, 2006, p. 256). In addition, German speakers tend to focus on the content of an utterance as opposed to the addressee of an utterance. An Eng-lish speaker may say “We must get together and have lunch sometime” at the end of a conver-sation to stress that they have enjoyed the interaction and, thus, focus on conveying this to the addressee (Scollon et al., 2012, pp. 10-11). However, a German speaker may focus on the content of the utterance and, therefore, take this as a literal invitation to have lunch. This ex-ample, moreover, stresses the distinction between explicitness and implicitness in communi-cation. While the English speaker implicitly conveys that they enjoyed the