More fragments of phatics

Wispé, Lauren 1991. The Psychology of Sympathy. New York: Plenum Press.

Scheler gave a long, detailed treatment of emotional identification (Einfühlung), which involves an involuntary and unconscious absorption of oneself be or immersion of oneself in another. Scheler's examples include, among others, instances of the identification of preliteratue peoples with the totemic animal, hypnotism, and children's make-believe games. (Wispé 1991: 77)

Cf. G. H. Mead and identification in Burke & Zappen (2006: 338; note 10).

The importance of Scheler's idea is that one person can be so submerged in another's personality that the former has no awareness that what she or he feels is not really her or his own feeling. Many of Scheler's examples invoke almost pathological processes, but they serve as suggestions of an extreme state of emotional correspondence wherein one person loses his or her individuality without an awareness that the process is taking place. (Wispé 1991: 77)

Empathy as communization.

What Scheler referred to as community of feeling (Miteinanderfühlen) Allport (1968) called "simultaneous feeling." These are not shared feelings, but feelings in common toward an identical object. (Wispé 1991: 77)

This is where phatic communion may break away from communization. It is advisable to reconsider the dual (or even triple) orientation towards the addressee and towards the referent (the third orientation would be toward oneself, I guess).

A wife and a mistress may both feel sadness as they view the body of their loved one. Each knows what the other is probably feeling, but for each, the sadness arises from within as a function of her relationship with the object that they can both perceive. Each is experiencing her own feelings. This is not fellow feeling, as the feelings are not shared; rather, it is a common social-emotional experience. (Wispé 1991: 77)

And yet, a point for communization in Ruesch's interpretation.

The term empathy is most frequently confused with sympathy, so the differences between the two terms need not be clarified. The term empathy was coined by Tichener (1909), who wrote, "Not only do I see gravity and modesty and pride and courtesy and stateliness, but I feel them in the mind's muscle. That is, I suppose, a simple case of empathy, if we may coin that term as a rendering of Einfühlung" (p. 21). Einfühling means literally "to feel one's way into," and it had already been used in early works on aesthetics by Vishner (Wind, 1963) and in psychology by Lipps (1903, 1905). (Wispé 1991: 78)

So, originally empathy was about the referential component.

It is hard to know exactly what Lipps meant by the term empathy (Hunsdahl, 1967), but in a general sense he meant by it a tendency for perceivers to project themselves into the object of perception, and he applied it later to understanding persons. He hypothesized that we understand the feelings of others by a process of analogical inferences based on imitating the expressive movements of those in our imagination - in the "mind's muscle," as Tichener wrote. We relate the imagined movements to our own past experiences and make inferences about the other person's feelings. Allport (1961) wrote that Lipps's theory is "loaded with kinesthetic inferences" (p. 536). (Wispé 1991: 78)

It is apparent that empathy had originally a lot to do with nonverbal expression.

Richards, Ivor A. 1945. Basic English. The Modern Language Journal 29(1): 60-65.

Primarily, Basic exists for those who are not going much further into English. It is for those who need enough English for truly wide communication without needing, or being able to acquire, or keep up, more English than will decently do that job. The job is considerable. Truly wide communication covers much more than the traveler's or the business man's requirements plus supplies for "phatic communion" to use Malinowski's famous term. It covers all of an intelligent and civilized mind's general contacts with people and things, both in the world of events and the world of ideas. And that is a range of interests much wider than elementary language courses or, we may remark in sadness, language teachers, are usually concerned with. (Richards 1945: 61-62)

The take-away here is that "phatic communion" was already famous in 1945. Also, this complements those (like Nord 2007) who find that phatic utterances are relevant for translators.

Pieris, Ralph 1951. Speech and Society: A Sociological Approach to Language. American Sociological Review 16(4): 499-505.

The sociologist's interest in language is due primarily to its social effects, its role is sociation or dis-sociation. A common language is an important symbol of social solidarity. The original meaning of the Latin term barbaros was probably stammering, stuttering, babbling unintelligibly, and other peoples had similar derogatory epiteths, such as the Slaw word for German which means mute, dumb. But if a language can unify a group vis-a-vis foreigners or out-groups, it can equally reflect differentiation and divisions of interest within society. A complex official or formal group like the state or nation contains innumerable informal sub-groups which cultivate minute linguistic differences. Runyon has familiarized us with the slang of the American racketeer or "spiv." The scientific fraternity has its own distinctive speechways; a cynical diarist has left an account of a meeting of the Entomological Society, addressed by a man of "very considerable scientific attainments," in a jargon which his fellow-scientists had come to regard "as symbols of a ritual which they think it pious to accept without question." Similarly, local dialects arise in different parts of a country - the bread accents of the Yorkmanshire differ from the Londoner's quaint "cockney." (Pieris 1951: 499-500)

Whaddayaknow - the connection between phatic communion and force unifiante is palpable. It may indeed be possible to discuss the phatic-metalingual combination of functions.

Speechways are also indices of social distance between different classes of a complex society. In Great Expectations the sensitive and impressionable Pip was humiliated by Estella's slighting remarks: "He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy! ... And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!" Speech and dress distinguish this "common laboring-boy," and with incomparable artistry Dickens traces Pip's reaction to a harrowing experience when he is later made to confide, "I want to be a gentleman. ... I am not at all happy as I am. I am disgusted with my calling and with my life." In Western Europe today the dress of different social strata varies but little. The hallmark of the London "cockney" is his distinctive mode of speech. The "old school tie" may well be a hackneyed music-hall joke, but a misplaced "h" is sufficient to betray a man's breeding, his education, his social class. A social class is not demarcated by legal decree, although even in England the law does on occasion take cognizance of gentility, and "what are called high spirits in the university students on Boat Race nights becomes serious misconduct as we move east of Temple Bar." Intra-social rapport is the pullulation of behavior-patterns cultivated by persons having common interests or approximately equal statuses. In other words, certain behavior-patterns give rise to classes having a kind of esprit de corps. If there is what Sombart calls a "specifically proletarian psyche," it is the creature of social vehicles such as language. Words like "comrade" have a type of linguistic use which Malinowski labels phatic communion whereby "ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words." (Pieris 1951: 500)

This is markedly different from Jakobson's interpretation of what kind of words are phatic. It is also much closer to communization than one would expect.

McKeon, Richard 1952. Semantics, Science, and Poetry. Modern Philology 49(3): 145-159.

One widespread tendency is to distinguish science as a cognitive use of language from literature and poetry, which are emotive, and from morals and politics, which are volitive. Another tendency is to treat such distinctions as successive stages of abstraction, the analysis of language in itself in "syntax" being possible by abstraction successively from designata which are treated in "semantics" and from the user of the language who is an object of investigation in "pragmatics." (McKeon 1952: 155)

Reference to R. Carnap's Introduction to Semantics, p. 9. I guess "volitive" is this guy's term for conative. "One distinction that has been repeatedly proposed is the age-old triology of affect, cognition, and conation. Affect refers to a person's feelings toward and evaluation of some object, person, issue, or event; cognition denotes his knowledge, opinions, beliefs, and thoughts about the object; and conation refers to his behavioral intentions and his actions with respect to or in the presence of the object." (Fishbein & Ajzen 1975: 11-12) I recognize now that those guys were reiterating the same stuff that Bühler was dealing with. The common (age-old) source is still unknown, although it's probably either Plato or Aristotle.

Science, qua science, would in such an approach require syntactic and semantic, but not pragmatic, analysis, since consideration of the peculiarities and purposes of the scientist who enunciated a scientific proposition would not be relevant to its truth or falsity, whereas the characteristic analysis of poetry would fall in pragmatics and no sharp difference would separate the linguistic problems of poetry from those of politics. (McKeon 1952: 155)

Reference to C. W. Morris, Foundations of the Theory of Signs, pp. 39-40. - "Even linguistic signs have many other uses than that of communicating confirmable propositions: they may be used in many ways to control the behavior of one's self or of other users of the sign by the production of certain interpretants." - This suggestion can very well put to use in terms of phatic function: that (sometimes or some) signs are used to control not the behavior of one's self or others but the interaction between one's self and others. The phatic function - especially in the sense of establishing, prolonging or discontinuing communication - is the function that controls the communication system.

Still another tendency treats these distinctions by differentiating the uses of language according to the relations of the individuals in communication, the relations of language to the referents signified, and the relations of language to the effects evoxed. Pragmatic uses of language become a subdivision of referential uses sharply distinguished from the evocative uses of poetry, for examyle, in the classification of the uses of language into (1) phatic communion, which establishes the bond of social communities, (2) referential symbolism, which is subdivided into pure referential symbolism and pragmatic-referential symbolism, and (3) evocative symbolism, which is subdivided into literature and pseudo-literature. Whether the practical is more like the poetic or the scientific, and whether the poetic is characterized adequately as the use of language to produce emotions, to present objects of interest, or to evake experiences, the poetic use of language is distinct from the scientific. (McKeon 1952: 155)

This guy has a weird grasp of the language functions but he does point out that phatic communion is useful for building communities. It's probably beyond my capabilities but I believe it's possible to link phatics to Norbert Elias's concept of figuration. The reference after "pseudo-literature": T. C. Pollock, The Nature of Literature: Its Relation to Science, Language, and Human Experience, pp. 165-166.

James, E. O. 1957. The Nature and Function of Myth. Folklore 68(4): 474-482.

Like peoples in a primitive state of culture in regions isolated from higher civilizations, the "folk" in a modern community, until comparatively recently, to a very considerable extent lived and moved and had their being in a tradition that coloured the whole of their life. The seasonal sequence of ploughing, seedtime and harvest, of lambing and shearing, together with the cries in the human cycle of birth, marriage and death, were integral elements in their life and its occurrences constituting their essential culture and determining their way of life, thought and behaviour. They were the things by which they lived, and it is in this milieu that their lore, in so far as it has survived intact, has to be evaluated and interpreted. (James 1957: 478)

In other words, the myths of a people go a long way towards understanding their way of life.

So regarded, its function [the function of myths or lore] is to produce "phatic communion", or rapport, between members of the community; a sense of "togetherness" stimulated by common sacred utterances and actions transmitted from one generation to another in a prescribed pattern, giving order and consistency to a collective effort at specified times of festivity or lament. As the spoken word is thought to exercise supernatural power in its utterance and repetition, it gives efficacy to the actions performed and the episodes recounted as an "uttered rite". Emotional situations of continual recurrence require perpetual satisfaction and the stories told and repeated with regular precision as a seasonal performance usually relate to certain events of outstanding importance which have a permament significance in the moral, social and religious organization of society. (James 1957: 478)

So this author, too, identifies phatic communion with rapport. "A sense of togetherness" is a new one.

Breed, Warren 1958. Mass Communication and Socio-Cultural Integration. Social Forces 37(2): 109-116.

1. Besides values and kinds of behavior, we have seen that certain specified individuals receive favorable treatment: doctors, business leaders, judges, mothers, clergymen, GIs overseas, etc. This leads to the proposition that leaders personify or embody the values related to their office. Thus the media, in avoiding criticism of the incumbents, are again supporting the existing cultural structure. Contrariwise, should a leader's devation become a public scandal, it is possible that a "domino effect" will endanger faith in the institution he represents as well. Whether people respond to such a failing in specific or diffuse ways is an empirical question; exploratory interviews suggests that both occur. For example, to sucha a "shattering" question as "What would you think if you discovered the Archbishop had a harem?" some respondents expressed shock about the individual only, others said they might question all religion, and one respondent point the way to anomie: "If they can do it, everybody can." The Hollywood production code follows the diffuse theory: "The reason why ministers of religion may not be comic characters or villains is simply because the attitude taken toward them may easily become the attitude toward religion in general". (Breed 1958: 116)

This was written almost 15 years before the Watergate scandal which reportedly changed the public opinion about the president's office. Today a similar process seems to be taking place in relation with America's National Football League (NFL).

2. The values of religion, as Durkheim said, are linked to social processes taking the form of ritual. Durkheim maintained that rituals, with their repeated, rhythmic, tangible form served to concretize and reinforce religious beliefs. While the analogy is far from perfect, it may be that the mass media also, by the repeated, patterned "ritual" of their dissemination - every month or week, day, hour, etc. - serve a similar function in the conservation of socio-cultural resources. One comes to expect a certain joke from Jack Benny, a "Tiny Tym" story at Christmas, a boy-gets-girl story in magazine and movie, etc. People may not so much "learn" from the media as they become accustamed to a standardized ritual. (Breed 1958: 116)

In Ogden and Richards's version ritualized formulas like "Good morning!" similarly are not so much informative as they are merely suitable. This leads to an interpretation of phatics as a cultural function (e.g. the phatic function of culture texts).

3. In this sense of discretion, we can perceive a similarity between mass communication and personal communication. Tact, the use of the white lie, and the studied avoidance of stating unpleasant facts may be characteristic of all social (as distinguished from scientific) communication. Perfection is a severe model for human behavior, and the use of discretion enables the structure of relationships - however genuine - to survive in the face of strain. What Malinowski called "phatic communion" can thus also be found in formal mass communications. (Breed 1958: 116)

Yet another connection between relationships and phatic communion.

Warriner, Charles K. 1965. The Problem of Organizational Purpose. The Sociological Quarterly 6(2): 139-146.

Thus to define purpose we must deal with the assumed functions or consequences of the several activities of an organization. In focusing upon the assumed functions as the criterion of purpose we differentiate purpose from function and through this we reintroduce the concept of purpose as a source for order and direction in what the organization does. (Warriner 1965: 144)

From Bühler's "semantic functions of language structures" to Jakobson's "language functions" and now just "assumed functions".

Although specific organizational purposes can be identified in this fashion, we found that these distinctions were too refined for our purposes. For example, it appeared of little consequence that the activities of one club were to enable the members to play bridge and in another to play pinochle or poker, particularly when we are constrasting them with service clubs, fraternities, or study clubs. (Warriner 1965: 144)

The language functions are too refined for anything except speech or discourse analysis.

We therefore focused upon the general kinds of values inherent in activities. Four such value functions of activities can be identified: (1) The performance pleasure function. Activities may serve primarily as pleasure-giving in themselves, for examyle, dancing. (2) The sociability function. Activities may be important primarily as a vehicle for interaction. For example, in some bridge clubs, the game is merely an excuse for getting together, and the bidding and the play are sacrificed to demands of chatting, gossip, phatic communion, or argument. (Warriner 1965: 144)

(1) The poetic/aesthetic function; (2) the phatic/social function. Notice that Warriner expands it in a certain sense by pointing out, as Malinowski did, that phatic communion may go hand in hand with some practical activity.

(3) The symbolic function. Activities may be important primarily as a ritual or ceremonial act in which each part of the set and the activity set as a whole stand for or represent some belief system. The representation and reaffirmation of these beliefs are the central functions of the activities: for example, invocations at meetings, the communion service in churches, and many rituals in fraternal organizations. (Warriner 1965: 144)

You may emphasize the symbolic function of rituals just as well as the phatic function of rituals.

(4) The productive function. Activities may be important because they produce some product or service or bring about a change in something, and it is this product or service which is desired or valued. It may be useful further to subdivide these productive functions according to the consumer of the product or service - e.g., the members individually, the members collectively, the organization itself, clients or customers, the community. (Warriner 1965: 144)

But where are the rest? Are there no organizations with primarily conative function? I'd think that institutions that control the behaviour of people are such organizations. The police, for example, is quite conative. Otherwise it's a neat outline that may aid nonverbalizing the language function.

Whiteley, W. H. 1966. Social Anthropology, Meaning and Linguistics. Man, New Series, 1(2): 139-157.

Malinowski could not be described as a descriptive linguist in the technical sense in which the term is now understood, but he made a number of illuminating observations on the function of language in Trobriand society and on the problems of meaning generally. Writing at a time when the function of language was widely conceived in terms of its capacity to convey thought, Malinowski was quickly made aware, in his observations on fishing, trading and gardening, of the importance of language as 'a mode of social action rather than a mere reflection of thought' (1923: 247). He was also much impressed by the use of language in 'free, aimless, social intercourse' and suggested for this the term 'phatic communion', by which he wished to stress the establishment and maintenance of social ties by a set of verbal conventions. While such views served as a valuable corrective to current views of language, and quickly became part of a new orthodoxy, it is his view of meaning, derived from the use of ethnographic texts, which is perhaps of greater interest, though he was by no means the first to make use of texts in this way. It was clear to Malinowski that such terms and expressions which related to ceremonies, ritual, social institutions and beliefs could not be translated by some hazarded equivalent but needed to be described by reference to the total social context in which they occurred; thus 'Exactly as in the reality of spoken or written languages, a word without linguistic context is a mere figment and stands for nothing but itself, so in the reality of a spoken living tongue, the utterance has no meaning except in the context of situation' (1923: 240). This illuminating concept was never developed fully by Malinowski bit it was taken over and developed by his contemporary in London, the late J. R. Firth, who incorporated it into his own contextual theory of meaning. (Whiteley 1966: 144)

Whiteley is already informed by Jakobson's interpretation, which quickly became a new orthodoxy of its own.

Hymes, Dell 1971. The Contribution of Folklore to Sociolinguistic Research. The Journal of American Folklore 84(331): 42-50.

The situation has not been seen for what it is partly because we are accustomed to generalize statements as to the functions of language, commonplaces as to the great importance of language in general. These commonplaces do us a disservice. Praising language in general, they obscure the need to study just what functions it does have in particular cases. They lead us to act as though language has the same function in every community (indeed, that all languages have the same functions and that each community has just one language having these functions). The fcats are otherwise. Hockett, for example, generalizes, "The story-teller must be a fluent and effective speaker. ..." But among the Gbeya of Central Africa no one is regarded as skilled in narration. Malinowski has stressed "phatic communion," talking for the sake of talking. The Wishram Chinook of the Columbia River take just the opposite view; one does not talk when one has nothing that needs to be said. Sapir has written of the tendency to fill up one's world with language; but among the Paliyans of South India, by the age of forty men are reported to speak almost not at all, and a communicative person is regarded with suspicion. Often one reads of the role of language in the transmission of culture, the social heritage, but among many peoples the great bulk of adult roles and skills are transmitted nonverbally. (Hymes 1971: 43-44)

Despite the negative attitude towards phatic communion I like this passage very much. Maybe I should list the definitions of phatic communion I have found?

Asad, Talal 1979. Anthropology and the Analysis of Ideology. Man 14(4): 607-627.

In fact, many of the basic assumptions and concerns of more recent writers influenced by the study of language can be traced back to Malinowski, not only of those writers who have been happy to acknowledge the connexion, but also of many who have not. Malinowski's critics, ranging from linguists such as J. R. Firth (1957) and Langendoen (1968) to the publicists for a New Anthropology like Ardener (1971), Henson (1974) and Crick (1976), have largely seen in Malinowski a failed language-theorist. One is often given to understand that despite his commendable emphasis on the importance of learning native languages for fieldwork, Malinowski has no real understanding of advanced language theory. He is dismissed by anthropologists like Sahlins (1976) for his crass utilitarianism, or noted briefly by linguists like Lyons (1968) as someone who contributed that quaint but not entirely valueless notion, 'phatic communion', to semantic theory. That Malinowski's texts on language also contain an anthropological theory of culture (which is not, by the way, to be confused with his theory of basic and derived needs), has gone generally unnoticed. (Asad 1979: 608)

Phatic communion is "quaint" indeed.

Meyers, Robert B. 1980. Pragmatic Interpretation. boundary 2 8(3): 115-140.

The speaker's act, inviting inquiry by means of a "Strategy," is undertaken because the speaker feels at the moment, for whatever reasons, that a more direct and forthright act is inappropriate. Such a "Strategy" might be used in a case in which the speaker did not feel properly disposed to the listener to convey to him accusatory "information." Indeed, because talk always occurs in a web of interconnections which constitute the social context, "statements" are rarely just neutral statements. The speaker who does not attend to this fact of social reality suffers the consequences. The speaker shapes his statements into acts appropriate to the context of social-moral interconnections in which he finds himself. Even the simple sharing of banalities, Malinowski's "phatic communion", has social-moral meaning far more important than the content of the talk. (Meyers 1980: 123)

The most negative definition of phatic communion yet.

Definitions of phatic communion

• a type of linguistic use whereby "ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words." (Pieris 1951: 500)
• [a use of language] which establishes the bond of social communities (McKeon 1952: 155)
• [the function that produces] rapport between members of the community; a sense of "togetherness" stimulated by common sacred utterances and actions (James 1957: 478)
• [the use of language that] enables the structure of relationships - however genuine - to survive in the face of strain (Breed 1958: 116)
• [the function of an activity as] merely an excuse for getting together, [for] chatting, gossip [...] or argument (Warriner 1965: 144)
• the establishment and maintenance of social ties by a set of verbal conventions (Whiteley 1966: 144)
• talking for the sake of talking (Hymes 1971: 43-44)
• the simple sharing of banalities (Meyers 1980: 123)

Fragments of phatics

Lyons, John 1977. Semantics Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Two of Bühler's functions, for which he employed the German terms 'Darstellung' ("representation") and 'Ausdruck' ("expression"), correspond closely with what we are calling the descriptive and the expressive functions, respectively. The third, for which Bühler used the term 'Appell', is what we will call the vocative function. Bühler's classification is based upon his analysis of the typical speech-act (Sprechakt) in terms of three essential components: the speaker, the addressee and the external situation to which reference may be made in the utterance. According to whether reference is made primarily to one rather than the other two of these three components, so the utterance will be primarily expressive, vocative or descriptive in function. (Lyons 1977: 52)

If functions are references the components they are tied to - like the metalingual function refers to the code - then the phatic function should refer to the contact or channel and in this sense it should be the metacommunicative function. What here is "primary" is "dominant" for Jakobson.

There is an obvious connexion between Bühler's analysis and the traditional analysis of the typical situation of utterance as a drama in which three poles are given grammatical recognition by means of the category of person (cf. 15.1); and Bühler and his followers have explicitly mentioned this connexion. (Lyons 1977: 52)

If the original three functions outlined by Bühler are connected to grammatical functions (first, second and third person), then the phatic function should be about something that is "between persons". That is, the code is inside persons, the message is outside persons and the channel is between persons.

They have emphasized, however, that it is not only utterances with a first-person subject that are expressive and not only utterances whose subject is a second-person pronoun that have a vocative function. They have also stressed the fact, as we are doing here, that few, if any, utterances have one function to the exclusion of the others. (Lyons 1977: 52)

"The verbal structure of a message depends primarily on the predominant function." (Jakobson 1985[1976c]: 113) And: "Although we distinguish six basic aspects of language, we could, however, hardly find verbal messages that would fulfill only one function. The diversity lies not in a monopoly of some one of these several functions but in a different hierarchical order of functions." (Jakobson 1981[1960c]: 21-22)

As we shall see later, Bühler's tripartite classification is also relevant to his distinction of symptomps, symbols and signals: every utterance is, in general and regardless of its more specific function, an expressive symptom of what is in the speaker's mind, a symbol descriptive of what is signified and a vocative signal is addressed to the receiver (cf. 4.1). (Lyons 1977: 52)

Do Sebeok's six types of signs accord to Jakobson's six functions, then?

The second additional factor is the channel of communication (cf. 2.2). Many utterances of everyday conversation have as their primary communicative function that of opening up or keeping open the channel. For example, there are all sorts of conventional greetings (Good morining!, etc.) or ritualized gambits (Wonderful weather we are having!, etc.) with which we can initiate a conversation. There are others with which we can initiate a conversation. There are others with which we can bring a conversation to a mutually acceptable conclusion (It's been lovely to see you again!, Give my regards to your wife, etc.); and others that serve to prolong the conversation or to indicate to the speaker that the addressee is still in contact and following what is being said. (Lyons 1977: 53)

Jakobson's interpretation is limited because he only pays attention to this last part. Also, Say hi to your mothor for me!

Much of this interaction-management information, as it has been called (i.e "the information that the participants exchange in order to collaborate with each other in ordering the temporal progress of the interaction": Laver & Hutcheson, 1972: 12), is transmitted by means of paralinguistic signals (eye-movements, gestures, postures, etc.: cf. 3.2). But some of it is encoded in the verbal component of language-utterances. (Lyons 1977: 53)

This is what Dipti Kulkarni referred to.

Malinowski (1930) had coined the term 'phatic communion' for that kind of speech "in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words" - a kind of speech which, he says, "serves to establish bonds of personal union between people brought together by the mere need of companionship and does not serve any purpose of communicating ideas"; and Jakobson borrows the term phatic in order to refer, more particularly, to that function of language which is channel-oriented in that it contributes to the establishement and maintenance of communicative contact. Thus interpreted, the phatic function is very close to, or at least is very important part of, what we have been calling the social function of language. (Lyons 1977: 53)

Damn. Lyons made this connection so much earlier than me, though I still feel that no-one has yet channeled phatics from Malinowski's phatic communion and Jakobson's phatic function to Morris's and Ruesch's communization. Ultimately, "bonds of personal union" is at the core of the matter. This involves Morris's communization, which goes to show that these "bonds of personal union" can be established by means other than communication; and then Ruesch clarifies that this is best understood in terms of common experience. In the end it all clicks together.

Burke, Kenneth and James P. Zappen 2006. On Persuasion, Identification, and Dialectical Symmetry. Philosophy & Rhetoric 39(4): 333-339.

One may appeal to reason, to the emotions, or in terms of character (logos, pathos, ethos) - hence Aristotle offers topics reviewing these resources (including ways of transforming an opponent's argument for your purposes). (Burke & Zappen 2006: 334)

I knew that logos could be identified with "reason" (instead of merely "word"), but I wasn't aware that pathos is "emotion" (wikipedia says something like "passion"). Also, this is almost like Bühler's tripartide model: logos/Darstellung; pathos/Ausdruck; ethos/Appell.

Burke, moreover, evidently developed a concept of identification very similar to Mead's. Mead (1938, 246-49), found a solution to the problem of the relativity of ordinary human experience in people's ability to correlate their experiences with those of others: "In the common world we find the individual not only reducing all his [or her] visual perspectives to the congruences of contact but also identifying his [or her] own congruences with those of others" (347). Such identifications are the cornerstone of human communication and human communities. In Mind, Self, and Society (1934, 253), Mead writes: "The principle which I have suggested as basic to human social organization is that of communication involving participation in the other. This requires the appearance of the other in the self, the identification of the other with the self, the reaching of self-consciousness through the other." (Burke & Zappen 2006: 338; note 10)

Reading this otherwise abstruse paper and its notes was worth while for this part alone. This is exactly what I came here for - to find out if Burke and Mead have discussed something like phatic communion. They have, it turns out: this is exactly the stuff that I wish to discuss in joining Malinowski's phatic communion to Morris's communization through Jakobson and Ruesch. (The first two had original ideas, the second two had more accessible terminology and point of view.) Also, since Morris edited Mead's 1938. The Philosophy of the Act, it's not surprising in the least that he comes to talk about communization.

Fiordo, Richard A. 1977. Charles Morris and the Criticism of Discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.

Morris differentiates between communication and communization. Broadly speaking, the word communication "covers any instance of the establishment of a commonage, that is, the making common of some property to a number of things". Thus "a radiator 'communicates' its heat to surrounding bodies, and whatever medium serves this process of making common is a means of communication..." Subsequently "the air, a road, a telegraph system, a language" all exemplify means of communication. Morris, however, limits communication "to the use of signs to establish a commonage of signification..." He employs the word communization to cover "the establishment of a commonage other than that of signification - whether by signs or other means..." (1955: 118). (Fiordo 1977: 70)

Whom is he citing in the first quote? It is relevant that communization can occur by means of signs. That is, it fits the description of phatic communion. Also, communization is opposed to differentiation (Morris 1949: 119) and can thus compared to force particulatrice and force unifiante in de Saussure, Baudouin and Kruszewski (cf. Jakobson 1971[1960b]: 421).

Communication occurs when a person who verbalizes or signifies in some manner, for example, anger, causes through the use of signs another person to verbalize or signify anger without that person's growing angry. Communization occurs when an angry person causes another person to become angry, and it establishes such a commonage with or without the use of signs ([Morris 1955:] 118). An angry person may communicate his anger by directing it at something in order to arouse another person's anger toward the same thing (and so communize anger), or he may equally well communicate his anger in order to arouse another person's fear of or respect for him. (Fiordo 1977: 70)

Score for the interpretation of "phatic" as em-phatic (e.g. related to empathy or fellow-feeling, Einstellung). The last part about emotion being directed either at the referent or the subject is accounted for by Ogden & Richards's "emotive functions" in the plural (1946[1923]: 230).

Moreover, Morris asserts that one may use communication "to make people different as well as to make them similar, and communization or differentiation between persons may be established by other means than communication" ([Morris 1955:] 119). Thus a person may unite or separate from other people by establishing shared significations with them; or a person may make himself common with or different from other people by sharing with other people something other than signification such as an activity or a disposition toward that activity. (Fiordo 1977: 70)

Here it really depends on how you define signification. A precedent can be found, again, in Ogden & Richards who write that since phatic utterances like "Good morningi!" and "Goodbye!" have very little reference to speak of, these are by definition not symbols (1946[1923]: 234). Uniting with other people, on the other hand, is at the heart of phatic communion and separating from other people (terminating the interaction) is how the phatic function is put to good use in pragmatics.

Although Morris does not define language in terms of communication, he does affirm a close relationship between language and communication. While restricting communication to signs, Morris does not restrict it to language signs ([Morris 1955:] 38). Since signs other than language signs occur in communication, not all communication is language communication. The latter occurs when language signs are present in communication ([Morris 1955:] 346-347). In other words, "whenever a language sign produced by one organism is a stimulus to another organism in social behavior communication does occur", and since language signs produce such communication, it is language communication ([Morris 1955:] 38). (Fiordo 1977: 71)

This would pose some problems, as phatic communion - as Malinowski puts it - "happens linguistically" (1946[1923]: 315) and is thus indeed language communication. This is why I would prefer Ruesch's elaboration wherein communization is the process that "exposes people to similar experiences" (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327). But this problem can be overcome by pointing out that in the phatic function is merely the dominant function in phatic communion. That is, communication and communization can be complementary - in fact they would seem to be primarily complementary. Ruesch himself adds: "Communization cannot wholly substitute for communication." (ibid, 327).

The fifith section of the chapter began with a definition of communication and its related concepts of communicator, communicatee, and the means and content of communication. A distinction between communication as the establishment of an individually or interpersonally common signification and communization as the establishment of something other than signification that is individually or interpersonally followed. The rast item treated was Morris' differentiation between the achievement of communication as an end in itself and the use of communication as a means to attain its further purposes. (Fiordo 1977: 178-179)

Further purposes? What further purposes. It is a bit disappointing that a whole book about Morris's thought touches communization so briefly and does little noteworthy with it and when it ultimately suggests something novel it is left ambiguous.

Graffi, Giorgio 2001. 200 Years of Syntax: A critical survey. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

As is well known, Bühler viewed three functions (Leistung) within language: the 'expression' (Ausdruck) of the speaker's experiences (Erlebnisse), the 'representation' (Darstellung) of objects and state of affairs, and the 'appeal' (Appell) to the hearer to gain her/his attention and to guide her/his behavior. (Graffi 2001: 71)

I was not aware that ausdrucking involved the speaker's experience. This reinforces the connection between the emotive and phatic functions in the latter's interpretation as em-phatics (e.g. that the phatic function is almost like a collective emotive function).

As a consequence, the linguistic sign functions at the same time as a 'symptom' of the speaker's experience, as a 'symbol' of extralinguistic reality and as a 'signal' for the hearer (Bühler 1934:28). Trubeckoj (1939a:17-18) ascribed to Bühler "the great merit" of "having brought to light a fact so important and nevertheless so long unnoticed". Two decades later, Jakobson (1963:216) deemed Bühler's model a simple "elucidation" of the traditional one. Trubeckoj's assessment was surely more correct than Jakobson's which is however historically understandable: in the sixties, the set of problems which gave rise to Bühler's triad of concepts appeared extremely remote, relegated to an age considered prehistoric - 'traditional' - by a structural linguist like Jakobson. (Graffi 2001: 71)

In all the talk about how one function is dominant and the other functions are subordinated but present it seems to get lost (for me, at least) that all the functions operate simultaneously. In a similar vain it could be argued that communication and communization are simultaneous processes, with either tendency dominating in a given context.

Bühler based his recognition of the three fundamental functions of language on a critical examination of the main linguistic theories of his time. They appeared to him irreparably one-sided. Wundt considered language only as expression (cf. Bühler 1918:3-4); "in extreme opposition to him" (p.8), Husserl saw in language only the function of representation; Marty, for his part, recognized only the function of appeal (cf. Bühler 1922:62). Plainly, these topics appeared exceedingly remote to Jakobson in the sixties. (Graffi 2001: 71-72)

Yet another reason for turning to Anton Marty. How great would it be to compare the conative function in Baldwin and Marty!

On the basis of his own conception of language as a sign system, Saussure had already succeeded in recognizing its particular features: however, he had not pushed himself so far as to explicitly acknowledge that the primary data of linguistics are simply linguistic facts, not physical, physiological, psychological facts, etc. (p.9). These considerations are based on what Bühler (p.42) names Prinzip der abstraktiven Relevanz ('Principle of abstractive relevance'): linguistic signs get their value not on the basis of their material nature but of the features which distinguish them from the other signs of the system (Graffi 2001: 72)

De Saussure's version of this principle is more famous. E.g. Derrida and his difference vs différence.

Morris, Charles 1949. Signs, Language and Behavior. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

The term 'communication,' when widely used, covers any instance of the establishment of a commonage, that is, the making common of some property to a number of things. In this sense a radiator "communicates" its heat to surrounding bodies, and whatever medium serves this process of making common is a means of communication (the air, a road, a telegraph system, a language). (Morris 1949: 118)

It is noteworthy that "medium" is Morris's term for "channel".

For our purposes 'communication' will be limited to the use of signs to establish a commonage of signification; the establishment of commonage oter than that of signification - whether by signs or other means - will be called communization. (Morris 1949: 118)

Communization is the process of making common. Communization may use communication as its means - as in the use of language - but there are other means of making some property common - air and road for example.

A person who is angry may be the occasion for another person becoming angry, and signs may or may not be the means of establishing the commonage: this is a case of communication. Or a person who signifies anger may by the use of signs cause another person to signify anger without necessarily becoming angry: this is a case of communication. (Morris 1949: 118)

Communization may proceed without the use of signs and communication may proceed without simultaneous communization.

The user of signs who effects communication is the communicator and the organism in which the sign-process is aroused by the signs of the communicator is the communicatee. (Morris 1949: 118)

The communicator expresses (Ausdruck) and the communicatee is impressed upon (Appell). I think these terms are an improvement from Jakobson's addresser and addressee, although they are kind of clumsy. One could just as well appropriate the very technical terms (presently seemingly used only in molecular biology) of effector and effectee. Note also that effecting communication is intentional and arousing sign-process in the communicatee is tantamount to appeal to the communicatee to engage in interpretation.

The communicatee may be the same organism which is the communicator, as when he writes a note to oneself to be read at a later time. The signs used are the means of communication and the signification made common by these means in [sic] the content of communication. (Morris 1949: 118)

In trying to tie communization with Malinowski's phatic communion, I imagine in communization the signification or content being superfluous, since phatic utterances, for example, are ideally asemantic or without referenece. We know that signs are not the only means of communization, although in Ruesch's version wherein communization is related to common experience: "The process called communization exposes people to similar experiences and although they do not transmit to each other feelings or thoughts, they know that the other person has some understanding because of the common experience." (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327) Phatic communion, then, becomes almost like a means to gauge, determine or ascertain "points of contact" - that is, shared understandings of something.

Communication, in this restricted sense, is not a new use of signs but a special case of the incitive use, namely, the use of signs to incite in the communicatee sign-behavior similar to that of the communicator (that is, of the same family of sign-behavior). Communication is designative, appraisive, prescriptive, or formative according to the mode of signifying of the content of communication. (Morris 1949: 118)

Communization, on the other and, may be thought of as the process of establishing similar sign-behavior.

The establishment of communication may in some cases be the sole purpose for which signs are used. (Morris 1949: 118)

Hmm... This fits the discription of the phatic function (in the sense of interaction management).

But normally communication is desired in order that some further purpose be realized, whether this purpose be informative, valuative, incitive, or systemic. All of these purposes involve communication as a state in their realization. The goal intended may or may not be that of communization. An angry person may communicate his anger at something in order to cause the communicatee to be angry at the same thing (and so to communize anger), but equally well a person who is angry may communicate his anger in order to cause the communicatee to fear or respect him. (Morris 1949: 118-119)

There is a distinct hint of conation in all of this. And I feel like I cannot avoid going into Mead's conversation of attitudes.

Communication may be used to make people different as well as to make them similar, and communization or differentiation between persons may be established by other means than communication. Since sign-behavior is itself a phase of behavior, to control the sign-behavior of other persons is a powerful means of controlling their total behavior, but the control intended may be for any purpose, moral or immoral, divisive or unificative, differentiative or communizative. (Morris 1949: 119)

This definitely involves "the appellative or operative functions" (Nord 2007: 171). The force unifiante of 19th century European linguists is presumably about code, but "unificative purpose" here is social. In Jakobson's scheme, "differentiating" signs would be an aspect of metalingual operations while being "divisive" would be an aspect of the phatic function (e.g. terminating contact). All of this has gotten so complex that I think I have to draw diagrams or make lists in order to untangle what I want to do in my forthcoming paper ("Channeling Phatics").

The child learns by various social rewards and punishments that in the community of English speaking persons the term 'good' is, among other things, a positive appraisor, that 'three' denotes certain objects and not others, that 'Come here!' signifies that a certain action is demanded, that paretheses show what signs are to be combined. (Morris 1949: 120)

Did Morris just outline Büdler's three functions with a surplus of something like an aspect of the metalingual operation in writing? It may turn out that I need to re-read Morris's Signs, Language and Behavior in total before writing my bachelor's thesis.

The thread of subjectivity

Innis, Robert E. 1988. The thread of subjectivity: philosophical remarks on Bühler's language theory. In: Eschbach, Achim (ed.), Karl Bühler's theory of languages: Proceedings of the Conferences Held at Kirchberg, August 26, 1984 and Essen, November 21-24, 1984. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing, 77-106.

Making very few claims to originality or uniqueness, Bühler continually defined his own position, as figure, over against a vast set of other positions, as ground. Early on in Sprachtheorie he insisted that many of his main themes and pivotal categories were derived from the philosophical, as well as the linguistic, tradition. But his own contribution was to weld them together into a unity by primarily supplying an ordering matrix and an interpretative framework. (Innis 1988: 77)

I imagine that's what good writers/thinkers do.

Perhaps the most attractive part of Bühler's work for me has been the peculiar fusion he managed to make between the objective (essentially social) and the subjective factors in language theory specifically and in the genesis of sense and meaning quite generally. (Innis 1988: 78)

Bühler did use philosophical terms such as subject for the sender, addresser or communicator and object for the referent.

The picture of language that informs Bühler's work is the well-known one of language as an instrument or organon for the effecting of semiotic exchange, that is, for the exchange of signs and meaning in social life. The representational function of language, its capacity to articulate, objectify, and transmit information about objects and states of affirs between a speaker and a hearer is rooted in a social, public, and communicative matrix. This is a point Bühler, with an admittedly rather backhanded reference to Plato's Cratylus, put right at the beginning of his 'Axiomatix der Sprachwissenschaften' (1933; see Innis, 1982). The communicatively oriented tool-character of language goes directly against the standard philosophical concern with language as a primarily individual and subjcetively oriented 'representational device.' Language is, to be sure, a representational device (hence the subtitle of Sprachtheorie), but is use by any linguistic subject for purely cognitional ends is a derivative from an original communicative goal pursued in a social field of shared actions, tasks, goals, and existential commitments. In a way paralleling Vološinov's treatment of the primary unit of a philosophy of language, Bühler saw 'verbal interaction' as the originative context for the investigation of language forms and structures. (Innis 1988: 79)

"Language, in its primitive function, to be regarded as a mode of action, rather than as a countersign of thougt." (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 296) And: "Statements about language as a tool, instrument, vehicle, etc., can be found in any textbook, but, strange as it seems, the apparently self-evident interference from this truism was not drawn in the linguistic tradition of the last century." (Jakobson 1971[1962b]: 523) And more: "When speaking of language as a communicative tool, one must remember that its primary role, interpersonal communication, which bridges space, is supplemented by a no less important function which may be characterized as intrapersonal communication." (Jakobson 1985[1973]: 98) In this last iteration it would appear that autocommunication (intrapersonal communication) is identified with the using language as a representational device. In the Bühler-Jakobson combo model code (language) is indeed between the subject (addresser) and object (referent) and the other components (factors) such as the message, the receiver and the channel seem superfluous in this connection. I think I just figured out how to tie Jakobson's communication model with the theory of autocommunication (especially with Peirce's version of it).

While Bühler would certainly admit, with Cassirer, that language is a 'symbolic form,' part of that vast set of artificial prostheses that mediate between and constitute meanings for human beings, it is not for him first of all a form oriented toward a non-praxical and speculative 'mirroring' of the world, as philosophers like to talk about it, but rather toward communicating some existentially significant surplus of perception that one member of the group might be in possession of in the context of shared actions embedded in shared times and spaces. (Innis 1988: 79)

This definition of symolic forms (as artificial prostheses) can be read as a definition of sign systems. Similarly, the context of shared actions embedded in shared times and spaces could be read as a definition of the channel. In this last connection it is possible - like Jakobson actually did in talking about bridging either time of space - to talk about channels that bridge space or shared space such as face-to-face interaction and channels that bridge time or shared time such as instant messaging.

With his fundamentally Aristotelian notion of language as action (Handlung, Aristotelian praxis) Bühler wanted to put language right back into social life and he thematized, in relatively formal and abstract terms, to be sure, its coordinating and 'steering function.' This 'cybernetic orientation' has been pointed out by Gerold Ungeheuer (1967) and in fact remained a dominent theme in Bühler's work until the end of his life (see Bühler, 1969). (Innis 1988: 80)

Silvi Salupere is often so ready to jump the gun and refer things back to Plato or Aristotle. Correctly so, it would seem. Referene to this interesting connection with cybernetics: Ungeheuer, Gerold (1967): Die kybernetische Grundlage der Sprachtheorie von Karl Bühler. In: To Honor Roman Jakobson. Essays on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday 11 of October 1966. 3 vols. The Hague. Paris: vol. 3:2067-2086. Reprinted in G. Ungeheuer, Sprache und Kommunikation. Hamburg, 1972.

Although I cannot go into it here, the closest major analogue to Bühler's position on the social matrices of sense and meaning in the modern philosophical realm is Mead's (see Günther, 1968) and Morris's symbolic behaviorism and the cognate work of Vygotsky (1934) and Vološinov (1929) with their insistence on the sociality of subjectivity and subjectivity of sociality. There is also a clear affinity here (and numerous other places, too) with the later work of Wittgenstein. (Innis 1988: 80)

Good man. This is the first I've seen of even a suggestion of possible affinity between Bühler and Morris.

It is in this sense that Bühler can say that phonemes as types are actually closer to conceptual elements than to sense qualities (Bühler, 1934: 289) for they are abstract structures, Gebilde, upon which the individual minds or consciousnesses in a community depend and to which they are subject. Bühler schematized this relationship by means of a famous diagram in Sprachtheorie (227):

The figure on left represents the total flatus vocis. The shaded part within it represents its relevant phonological moments, which compose the differential aspects of the linguistic sign. The figure on the right represents the 'object-domain' on which the linguistic sign bears. The shaded part within it represents only its relevant moments, which, Buhler's extrapolation, are apprehended by process akin to those by which we grasp the phonemic structure of linguistic signs. (Innis 1988: 85)

I dislike the whole principle of abstractive relevance (especially in de Saussure because of its enormous influence on philosophers who obfuscate everything) because I'm not so sure that this is as important for general semiotics as some (like Massimo Leone) would argue. That is, I'm not sure if or how one would proceed with this principle in studying nonverbal communication (e.g. the case of Ray Birdwhistell's kinesics, which got quite tangled up with this principle). Though I find this scheme much more to my liking than Saussure's signifier/signified scheme which lacks this aspect "relevant phonological moments" (as far as I know - having avoided de Saussure I have no say in the matter).

Now language for Bühler is not just a tool for the intersubjective exchange of information and meanings but also a tool for bringing experience under control, a theme also dear to Vygotsky's an Vološinov's hearts. (Innis 1988: 89)

And also in a way dear to my heart. I would subsume this aspect under the notion of "regulation".

A slightly different position has been put forward by Gestalt theory, as in the following text from Wolfgang Köhler's Gestalt Psychology:

Gestalt psychology holds [that] sensory units have acquired names, have become richly symbolic, and are now known to have certain practical uses, while nevertheless tehy have existed as units before any of these further facts were added. Gestalt psychology claims that it is precisely the original segregation of circumscribed wholes which makes it possible for the sensory world to appear so utterly imbued with meaning to the adult; for in its gradual entrance into the sensory field, meaning follows the lines drawn by natural organization; it usually enters into segregated wholes. (Köhler, 1959: 82).

However, we will often see the segregated unit differently because the lines drawn in or superimposed upon the social field of perception by the linguistic sign and its concomitant system of semantic markers functioning like a coordinate system are projected and not really determined by the lines of the 'natural' object itself. 'Knuckle-fat' and 'elbow-grease' both fit the segregated unit but what that unit is, even perceptually, is not given independently of some perceptual category. In such a case as this, and, of course, many others could be cited, systems of expression guide and inform the perceptual segmeting acts themselves. (Innis 1988: 91)

I cannot help but to read concourse into this: 'natural' movement of the human body and its parts is segmented into meaningful units often by means of linguistic signs. What is the difference between a smile and a grin?

In fact, language cannot be a prison-house for Bühler as it has become for certain strands of French thought. Indeed, one of his main theses was the constant and ineluctable modulation and guiding of the articulation and application process by the Sachwissen of the linguistic subject, paralleling in some ways Gadamer's insistence on 'application' as a hermeneutical necessity (Gadamer, 1960: especially part II) and Gardiner's concentration on the 'thing-meant' (Gardiner, 1932). (Innis 1988: 92)

My interest in Alan H. Gardiner's work only grows. Also, this: "So I wrote a song. I hope you guys dig it. It’s a song about people and sasquatches... other French science stuff. That’s French science." (Reggie Watts)

A concept, as a schematic abstraction, is not the 'object' of our knowledge but an instrument of our knowledge. It's reality, as the Scholastic philosophers perspicuously showed, is the reality of a relation, its being directed toward something which is not itself. (Innis 1988: 93)

Taking this premise and running with it, I now see that the "semantic functions of language structures" as sign-functions (sensu renvoi - in the sense of referring to something other than itself) can be illustrated as semiotic relations between the sign and: (a) the experience of the subject [emotive]; (b) the extrasemiotic object [referential sui generis]; (c) the intended interpreter of the given sign [conative]; (d) the sign itself as a node in the sign system [metalingual]; (e) the sign itself as a message, a text, a word of art, etc. [poetic/aesthetic]; and (f) ... - See, this is where I get in trouble, because at the moment I cannot think of any reasonable, strictly semiotic, interpretation of the phatic function. It is a relation between the sign and what? At best I could say something like the relationship between the communicator and the communicatee, but aside from finding Morris's terms more suitable I'm not so sure it's wise to conflate matters of signification and communication so easily.
One line of thought that didn't lead to anywhere in particular was to add something to the Bühler-Jakobson combo model by conflating Bühler's three types of signs with Peirce's three semantic relations. That is, something like: symptom-icon, signal-index, and symbol-symbol. This would be the conventional way to go about it. Taking into account the "arrow" formations in the combo model, I'd rather fit together: (1) Bühler's symptom with Peirce's icon; (2) Bühler's symbol with Peirce's index; and (3) Bühler's signal and Peirce's symbol. I'm not sure I can rationalize these connections. Emotions and icons are both in the category of Firstness; the object/symbol in Bühler's model is opposite of contact in the combo model... well, here it would fit rather with the index because Secondness is Otherness... huh. So the first iteration (symptom-icon, signal-index, and symbol-symbol) is more correct. It should be noted, then, that in Bühler's model the subject is First, the addressee is Second and the object is Third. But all this is just speculation.

Esse ad defines its 'reality.' But the conceptual content borne by the linguistic sign is also controlled and defined by the 'intentional object' and its characteristics, by what the concept makes known, and the linguistic subject constantly appraises the 'fit' between the content and the object-domain into which it gears, a point often made by Peirce and also Wittgenstein. (Innis 1988: 93)

This is why understanding the exact nature of the language functions is so difficult: language in its functions as they are outlined by both Bühler and Jakobson don't exactly "make known" the concept of the component it is tied with. The functions are more like "undercurrets" or "orientations" of sign-functions. In the end the functions are there for the benefit of the speech analyst - in actual speech these functions are quite irrelevant. "Function" would seem to fit the notion of "object-domain", but that would relegate the sender, receiver, message, code and contact to "objects". This is unproblematic only in the case of the referential function, in which case it is pertinent to discuss objects. Could it be said that the functions "objectify" these componets? Does the metalingual operation make code the object of speech? I think it does. But what kind of "object" is apparent in the phatic function? Is contact itself an object? The relationship between the sender and receiver, on the other hand, could be an "object" in this sense... I don't really know anymore.

As is well-known to students of Bühler's work, Bühler built his language model around a fundamental distinction between the index field [das Zeigfeld] and the symbol field [das Symbolfeld]. This distinction adverts to the autonomous and separate functions of intuitive pointing and presenting and the abstract, conceptual grasping of the world. These two fields are "the two sources out of which in every case the precise interpretation of linguistic expressions is nourished" (Bühler, 1934: 149), namely, the situation, which as intuitive is determined through deixis in all forms, thus generating the Zeigfeld, and the context, the syntactic and semantic matrix in which symbols are to besituated, the Symbolfeld. (Innis 1988: 99)

This is a pretty cogent account of context and situation and accords to my own intuitive distinction between the pairs verbal context and nonverbal situation (in the sense that nonverbal communication is more about signals and verbal communication more about symbols, although this distinction is not absolute). It would be very complicated to draw a distinction between context and contact in Jakobson's model on the basis of these fields.

First, there is Bühler's insistence on the primacy of the social matrix of sense and meaning, rooted to be sure in his organon-model of language, but also in his appropriation of the Aristotelian notion of praxis, of Handlung, and of the objective orientation of language theory deriving from Hobbes and Mill. It intesects clearly with the work of Mead, Morris, Wittgenstein and many others. (Innis 1988: 100)

Too bad that the intersection with Morris wasn't elaborated in any significant way. That would be an interesting read, I think.

The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages

More on

Bronisław Malinowski or Phaticity

Malinowski, Bronislaw 1946[1923]. The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages. In: Ogden, C. K. & I. A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. Eighth edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 296-336.

IV. Language, in its primitive function, to be regarded as a mode of action, rather than as a countersign of thougt. Analysis of a complex speech-situation among savages. The essential primitive uses of speech: speech-in-action, ritual handling of words, the narrative, 'phatic communion' (speech in social intercourse). (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 296)

Already from this introductory note it seems that it is appropriate to draw a connection between phatic communion and the as of yet still ambiguous "social function". It would, in short, constitute the linguistic aspect of social action. That is, the use of language is only one mode of action among others.

But the object of a scientific translation of a word is not to give its rought equivalent, sufficient for practical purposes, but to state exactly whether a native word corresponds to an idea at least partially existing for English speakers, or whether it covers an entirely foreign conception. That such foreign conceptions do exist for native languages and in great number, is clear. All words which describe the native social order, all expressions referring to native beliefs, to specific customs, ceremonies, magical rites - all such words are obviously absent from English as from any European language. Such words can only be translated into English, not by giving their imaginary equivalent - a real one obviously cannot be found - but by explaining the meaning of each of them through an exact Ethnographic account of the sociology, culture and tradition of that native community. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 299-300)

This is relevant for concourse. If I were to explore native Estonian concepts of behaviour then this is a good approximation of what needs to be done.

The metaphorical use of wood for canoe would lead us into another field of language psychology, but for the present it is enough to emphasize that 'front' or 'leading canoe' and 'rear canoe' are important terms for a people whose attention is so highly occupied with competitive activities for their own sake. To the meaning of such words is added a specific emotional tinge, comprehensible only against the background of their tribal psychology in ceremonial life, commerce and enterprise. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 301)

I'll note that Jakobson uses the term "emotional tinge" in a slightly different way. As I see it at the moment he means the intonation of words while this emotional tinge here is related to the whole culture. In other words, it is not the emotional tinge of the utterance but the emotional tinge of the type of utterance. Phrase this way it sounds a bit like "emotional connotation".

This latter again, becomes only intelligible when it is placed within its context of situation, if I may be allowed to coin an expression which indicates on the one hand that the conception of context has to be broadened and on the other that the situation in which words are uttered can never be passed over as irrelevant to the linguistic expression. We see how the conception of context must be substantially widened, if it is to furnish us with its full utility. In fact it must burst the bonds of mere linguistics and be carried over into the analysis of the general conditions under which a language is spoken. Thus, starting from the wider idea of context, we arrive once more at the results of the foregoing section, namely that the study of any language, spoken by a people who live under conditions different from our own and possess a different culture, must be carried out in conjunction with the study of their culture and of their environment. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 306)

I'm beginning to understand why Birdwhistell attributed the "context" in the title of his Kinesics and Context to Malinowski.

A statement, spoken in real life, is never detached from the situation in which it has been uttered. For each verbal statement by a human being has the aim and function of expressing some thought or feeling actual at that moment and in that situation, and necessary for some reason or other to be made known to another person or persons - in order either to serve purposes of common cation, or to establish ties of purely social communion, or else to deliver the speaker of violent feelings or passions. Without some imperative stimulus of the moment, there can be no spoken statement. In each case, therefore, utterance and situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of situation is indispensable for the understanding of the words. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 307)

This sounds a lot like Bühler's organon model of language. This phrase, "establishing ties of purely social communion" is most likely the source of Jakobson's interpretation of the phatic function. My aim is to show that these "ties of purely social commuion" extend beyond the speech event and form a is very important for social beings such as ourselves. The last bit is quite likely the source of the term "context-bound" in yet another anthropologist, Edward T. Hall.

But it is obvious that the context of situation, on which such a stress is laid here, is nothing else but the sign-situation of the Authors [Ogden & Richards]. Their contention, which is fundamental to all the arguments of their book, that no theory of meaning can be given without the study of the mechanism of reference, is also the main gist of my reasoning in the foregoing paragraphs. The opening chapters of their work show how erroneous it is to consider Meaning as a real entity, contained in a word or utterance. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 308)

In other words, meaning is not a substance but a relation. And contrary to de Saussure, in whose work it would appear that the meaning of a sign consists in its relation with the abstract system of signs, this approach here appears to emphasize that the sign's relation to it's context of situation or sign-situation is in fact the relation we should be studying.

This attitude in which the word is regarded as a real entity, containing its meaning as a Soul-box contains the spiritual part of a person or thing, is shown to be derived from the primitive, magical uses of language and to reach right into the most important and influential systems of metaphysics. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 308)

A similar tendency is present in my contemporaries when they discuss texts as something like boxes of consciousness. It's the same type of magical thinking but with Soul replaced with Consciousness.

Since the whole world of 'things-to-be-experienced' changes with the level of culture, with geographical, social and economic conditions, the consequence is that the meaning of a word must be always gathered, not from a passive contemplation of this word, but from an analysis of its functions, with reference to the given culture. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 309)

Compare this to Mukarovsky and Lotman and especially the latter's definition of the culture text.

The study of the above-quetode native text has demonstrated that an utterance becomes comprehensive only when we interpret it by its contxt of situation. The analysis of this context should give us a glimpse of a group of savages bound by reciprocal ties of interest and ambitions, of emotional appeal and response. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 310)

According to Kulkarni, these reciprocal ties of interest (and ambitions, to a lesser degree, one imagines) is (are) exactly what phatic communion is about.

There was boastful reference to competitive trading activities, to ceremonial overseas expeditions, to a complex of sentiments, ambitions and ideas known to the group of speakers and hearers through their being steeped in tribal tradition and having been themselves actors in such events as those described in the narrative. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 310)

Sentiments, ambitions and ideas generally fall into the category of "common experience" in Ruesch's treatment of communization.

In this, Speech is the necessary means of communion; it is the one indispensable instrument for creating the ties of the moment without which unified social action is impossible. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 310)

Speech also underlies common experience: it is the means by which rules of conduct, dogma and other neat stuff are shared.

But, of course, the men, as they act, utter now and then a sound expressing keenness in the pursuit or impatience at some technical difficulty, joy of achievement or disappointment at failure. Again, a word of command is passed here and there, a technical expression or explanation which servess to harmonise their behaviour towards other men. The whole group act in a concerted manner, determined by old tribal tradition and perfectly familiar to the actors through lifelong experience. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 311)

These phrases concern the conative function.

We have to realize that language originally, among primitive, non-civilized peoples was never used as a mere mirror of reflected thought. The manner in which I am using it now, in writing these words, the manner in which the author of a book, or a papyrus or a hewn inscription has to use it, is a very far-fetched and derivative function of language. In this, language becomes a condensed piece of reflection, a record of fact or thought. In its primitive uses, language functions as a link in concerted human activity, as a piece of human behaviour. It is a mode of action and not an instrument of reflection. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 312)

When speaking of language(ing) as a form of human behaviour, e.g. "verbal behaviour", this difference should be kept in mind. Compare this to Bühler and his organon model.

Are our conclusions about the nature of language correct, when faced with this use of speech; can our views remain unaltered when, from speech in action, we turn our attention to free narrative or to the use of language in pure social intercourse; when the object of talk is not to achieve some aim but the exchange of words almost as an end in itself? (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 312)

We're slowly inching towards the definition of phatic communion.

When incidents are told or discussed among a group of listeners, there is, first, the situation of that moment made up of the respective social, intellectual and emotional attitudes of those present. Within this situation, the narrative creates now bonds and sentiments by the emotional appeal of the words. In the narrative quoted, the boasting of a man to a mixed audience of several visitors and strangers produces feelings of pride or mortification, of triumph or envy. In every case, narrative speech as found in primitive communities is primarily a mode of social action rather than a mere reflection of thought. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 312-313)

E.g. phatic utterances are characterized by their dominant phatic function but other functions (e.g. the referential/intellectual, emotive/emotional and conative/appelative) are subordinate to it.

A narrative is associated also indirectly with one situation to which it refers - in our text with a performance of competitive sailing. In this relation, the words of a tale are significant because of previous experiences of the listeners; and their meaning depends on the context of the situation referred to, not to the same degree but in the same manner as in the speech of action. The difference in degree is important; narrative speech is derived in its function, and it refers to action only indirectly, but the way in which in acquires its meaning can only be understood from the direct function of speech in action. To use the terminology of this work: the referential function of a narrative is subordinated to its social and emotive function, as classified by the Authors in Chapter X. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 313)

Previous experience = communization. And Ogden and Richards call it the social function?! Now I have to read Chapter X.

The case of language used in free, aimless, social intercourse requires special consideration. When a number of people sit together at a village fire, after all the daily tasks are over, or when they chat, resting from work, or when they accompany some mere manual work by gossip quite unconnected with what they are doing - it is clear that here we have to do with another mode of using language, with another type of speech function. Language here is not dependent upon what happens at that moment, it seems to be even deprived of any context of situation. The meaning of any utterance cannot be connected with the speaker's or hearer's behaviour, with the purpose of what they are doing. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 313)

Wow. If the phatic function is removed from the referential function then does it equally mean that in the Bühler/Jakobson triangular combo model the code is equally removed from the receiver and the message removed from the sender? In the sense that the receiver's code must be that of the sender's in order to comprehend the message (and in this sense removed from the receiver) and the message must be removed from the sender to gain some sort of autonomy this does seem to fit. But then again that triangular combo model is very contingent and not very important. // Notice, rather, that the phatic function cannot be identified with metacommunication as Christiane Nord does because phatic utterances are not supposed to be about what is going on at the moment of communication.

A mere phrase of politeness, in use as much among savage tribes as in a European drawing-room, fulfils a function to which the meaning of its words is almost completely irrelevant. Inquiries about health, comments on weather, affirmations of some supremely obvious state of things - all such are exchanged, not in order to inform, not in this case to connect people in action, certainly not in order to express any thought. It would be even incorrect, I think, to say that such words serve the purpose of establishing a common sentiment, for this is usually absent from such current phrases of intercourse; and where it purports to exist, as in expressions of sympathy, it is avowedly spurious on one side. What is the raison d'être, therefore, of such phrases as 'How do you do?' 'Ah, here you are', 'Where do you come from?' 'Nice day to-day' - all of which serve in one society or another as formulaæ of greeting or approach? (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 313-314)

E.g. the assumption that phatic utterances are almost asemantic.

I think that, in discussing the function of Speech in mere sociabilities, we come to one of the bedrock aspects of man's nature in society. There is in all human beings the well-known tendency to congregate, to be together, to enjoy each other's company. Many instincts and innate trends, such as fear or pugnacity, all the types of social sentiments such as ambition, vanity, passion for power and wealth, are dependent upon and associated with the fundamental tendency which makes the mere presence of others a necessity for man. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 314)

This tendency transcends linguistic niceties (those mere sociabilities) and concerns nonverbal behaviour as well.

Now speech is the intimate correlate of this tendency, for, to a natural man, another man's silence is not a reassuring factor, but, on the contrary, something alarming and dangerous. The stranger who cannot speak the language is to all savage tribesmen a natural enemy. To the primitive mind, whether among savages or our own uneducated classes, taciturnity means not only unfriendliness but directly a bad character. This no doubt varies greatly with the national character but remains true as a general rule. The breaking of silence, the communion of words is the first act to establish links of fellowship, which is consummated only by the breaking of bread and the communion of food. The modern English expression, 'Nice day to-day' or the Melanesian phrase, 'Whence comest thou?' are needed to get over the stange and unpleasant tension which men feel when facing each other in silence. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 314)

Along with the tendency to speak mere sociabilities there is a tendency to smile and establish eye contact as a means to lower social tensions. Also, notice that "the communion of words" is only the first step and the final step is what? Communization! That is, sharing something - be it food or other commodities (e.g. sharing a cigarette or a sip of beer at a musical venue).

After the first formula, there comes a flow of language, purposeless expressions of preference or aversion, accounts or irrelevant happenings, comments on what is perfectly obvious. Such gossip, as found in Primitive Societies, differs only a little from our own. Always the same emphasis of affirmation and consent, mixed perhaps with an incidental disagreement which creates the bonds of antipathy. Or personal accounts of the speaker's views and life history, to which the hearer listens under some restraint and with slightly veiled impatience, waiting till his own turn arrives to speak. For in this use of speech the bonds created between hearer and speaker are not quite symmetrical, the man linguistically active receiving the greater share of social pleasure and self-enchancement. But though the hearing given to such utterances is as a rule not as intense as the speaker's own share, it is quite essential for his pleasure, and the reciprocity is established by the change of rôles. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 314-315)

This closest to Jakobson's definition of the phatic function. Emphasis on affirmation and consent, on the other hand, is closer to Ruesch's version of communization.

There can be no doubt that we have here a new type of linguistic use - phatic communion I am tempted to call it, actuated by the demon of terminological invention - a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words. Let us look at it from the special point of view with which we are here concerned; let us ask what light it throws on the function or nature of language. Are words in Phatic Communion used primarily to convey meaning, the meaning which so symbolically theirs? Certainly not! They fulfil a social function and that is their principal aim, but they are neither the result of intellectual reflection, nor do they necessarily arous reflection in the listener. Once again we may say that language does not function here as a means of transmission of thought. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 315)

A social function it is indeed! The last sentence is especially on par with Morris's communization and perhaps even with Mead's identification.

But can we regard it as a mode of action? And in what relation does it stand to our crucial conception of context of situation? It is obvious that the outer situation does not enter directly into the technique of speaking. But what can be considered as situation when a number of people aimlessly gossip together? It consists in just this atmosphere of sociability and in the fact of the personal communion of these people. But this is in fact achieved by speech, and the situation in all such cases is created by the exchange of words, by the specific feelings which form convivial gregariousness, by the give and take of utterances which make up ordinary gossip. The whole situation consists in what happens linguistically. Each utterance is an act serving to direct aim of binding hearer and speaker by a tie of some social sentiment or other. Once more language appears to us in this function not as an instrument of reflection but as a mode of action. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 315)

Here I would argue against Malinowski in that what happens linguistically is by no means all that constitutes the whole situation. The atmosphere of sociability is also dependent upon nonverbal behaviour - be it a kind disposition (pleasant face), smiling (or any other type of positive feedback), isopraxism (motor mimicry), etc. On another level the establishment of ties of social communion are contingent upon common life experiences, similar ideas and ideology, etc.

The binding tissue of words which unites the crew of a ship in bad weather, the verbal concomitants of a company of soldiers in action, the technical language running parallel to some practical work or sporting pursuit - all these resemble essentially the primitive uses of speech by man in action and our discussion could have been equally well conducted on a modern example. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 315)

But here the phatic communion is not wholly devoid of a referential component. For there to occur speech about bad weather there first has to be bad weather as experienced by all speakers involved. To Kulkarni's interesting discussion of the phatic function in instant messages I would now add that the nature of phatic utterances in instant messages are somewhat different from phatic utterances in face-to-face interaction, because the conditions (the context of the situation) is different in each. Talking about bad weather, for example, does not achieve the same effect when one is in Southern California and the other in Lapland.

Again in pure sociabilities and gossip we use language exactly as savages do and our talk becomes the 'phatic communion' analysed above, which serves to establish bonds of personal union between people brought together by the mere need of companionship and does not serve any purpose of communicating ideas. (Malinowski 1946[1923]: 315-316)

Here my point about connecting phatic communion with communization becomes apparent: sometimes we engage in phatic communion not because we don't intend to communicate to ideas but because we already share some ideas and communicating about them would be superfluous. This is why communicating with a comrade, a co-patriot, a co-worker, etc. is markedly different from communicating with a stranger who does not share your life-experiences and sentiments, ambitions, etc. With a complete stranger one's phatic utterances may indeed be about weather or other immediately available matters, but with a fellow the phatic utterances may be about much more specific matters - about mutual contacts, occurrences not in the immediate situation, shared commodities, knowledge, etc. When I know a lot about Jakobson and you know a lot about Jakobson then we're not really exchanging ideas about Jakobson - we already possess those ideas; rather, we're making small talk about lofty ideas. Oh, you took that course? I took that course too last semester, it was okay. Was the test as difficult? It was for me... and so on.

Ogden, Charles Kay and Ivor Armstrong Richards 1946[1923]. The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism. Eighth edition. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.

Besides symbolizing a reference, our words also are signs of emotions, attitudes, moods, the temper, interest or set of the mind in which the references occur. They are signs in this fashion because they are grounded with these attitudes and interests in certain looser and tighter contexts. Thus, in speaking a sentence we are giving rise to, as in hearing it we are confronted by, at least two sign-situations. One is interpreted from the symbols to reference and so to referent; the other is interpreted from verbal signs to the attitude, mood, interest, purpose, desire, and so forth of the speaker, and thence to the situation, circumstances and conditions in which the utterance in made. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 223)

At this time (first published 1923) these were the main semantic functions: referential and emotive (also discussed as cognitive and expressive; even today as cognitive and affective).

(ii) There are the situations which derive from attitudes, such as amity or hostility, of the speaker to his audience. In written language many of the most obvious signs of these attitudes are necessarily lost. Manner and tone of voice have to be replaced by the various devices, conventional formulæ, exaggerations, under-statements, figures of speech, underlining, and the rest familiar in the technique of letter-writing. Word order is plainly of especial importance in this connection, but, as we shall see, no general literary device can be appropriated by any one of the functions of speech, it is sure to be borrowed on occasion by the others. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 224)

The emotive function in written language.

(iv) The structure of our symbols is often determined by our Intention, the effects which we endeavour to promote by our utterance. If we desire a hearer to commit suicide we may, on occasion, make the same remarks to him whether our reason for desiring such action is benevolent interest in his career or a dislike of his personal characteristics. Thus the symbol modification due to the effect intended must not be confused with that due to the attitude assumed towards an interlocutor, although often, of course, they will coincide. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 225)

Hardcore! This passage suggests that one should not confuse the emotive function with the conative function. // This chapter seems to outline the progenitors of Jakobson's language functions: (i) is referential, (ii) is emotive, (iii) is poetic/aesthetic, (iv) is conative and (v) could be likened to the metalingual. The only one missing is phatic, which probably comes along a little later on.

The functions we are examining are those necessarily operative in all communication, the ways in which the work of speech is performed, the essential uses which speech serves. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 228)

Similarly, Jakobson's six factors are "inalienably involved in verbal communication" (Jakobson 1981[1960c]: 21)

In translation, for example, the lack of such an analysis of the ways in which words are used has led to much confusion. Faced by the unaccountable failure of apparently accurate renderings, linguists have been too ready to accept the dicta of philosophers on this point, as well as their vague vocabulary. Thus, according to Sapir, "all the effects of the literary artist have been calculated, or intuitively felt, with reference to the formal 'genius' of his own language; they cannot be carried over without loss or modification. Croce is therefore perfectly right in saying that a work of literary art can never be translated. Nevertheless, literature does get itself translated, sometimes with ashonishing adequacy." [Sapir, Language, pp. 237-239.] So a problem appears to arise, and as a solution it is suggested that "in literature there are intertwined two distinct kinds or levels of art - a generalized, non-linguistic art, which can be transferred without loss into an alien linguistic medium, and a specifically linguistic art that is not transferable. I believe the distinction is entirely valid, though we never get the two levels pure in practice. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 228)

Haha. Language as a primary modelling system and literature as a secondary modelling system. Or how transposition involves the "translation" of some extralinguistic characteristics into another medium (e.g. "translating" the "gloom" in Orwell's book, Nineteen Eighty-Four, into the movie, 1984).

On the other hand the more the emotive functions are involved the less easy will be the task of blending several of these in two vocabularies. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 230)

The emotive functions as in plural? Is that why above there is a distinction between "The expression of attitude to listener" and "The expression of attitude to referent"? E.g. is there a difference between the attitude towards the addressee and the attitude towards the referent? This is an extremely suggestive point, because it would enable one to break the emotive function down into distinct categories.

A word is an articulate sound symbol in its aspect of denoting something which is spoken about.

A sentence is an articulate sound symbol in its aspect of embodying some volitional attitude of the speaker to the listener.

Dr Gardiner's 'volitional attitude' would appear to be included in No. IV of our list of functions. It will be generally agreed that no use of speech can be admitted to be an attempt at communication unless this function is concerned. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 230)

Huh. So it's advisable to turn to Alan H. Gardiner's The Theory of Speech and Language for an exposition of the conative function? The footnote here even gives a page number: p. 98.

It is certainly true that preoccupation with 'expression' as the chief function of language has been disastrous. But this is not so much because of the neglect of the listener thereby induced as because of the curiously narcotic effect of the word 'expression' itself. There are certain terms in scientific discussion which seem to make any advance impossible. They stupefy and bewilder, yet in a way satisfy, the inquiring mind, and though the despair of those who like to know what they have said, are the delight of all whose main concern with words is the avoidance of trouble. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 231)

This may in fact be the reason why Jakobson prefers Marty's term, emotive, instead of the more common "expressive".

Thus Dittrich, the holder of one of the few recognized Chairs of the subject, wrote in 1900: "For linguistic science it is fundamental that language is an affair not merely of expression but also of impression, that communication is of its essence, and that in its definition this must not be overlooked." (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 231)

Note that "impress" is the original meaning of appellatio, e.g. the conative function. Citation: O. Dittrich, Die Probleme der Sprachpsychologie, pp. 11-12.

What such additional words contribute to a science may be doubted; but it is certain that von Humboldt went too far in this direction when he said: "Man only understands himself when he has experimentally tested the intelligibility of his words on others." (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 231)

The Authors of this piece may think Humboldt going too far but this is certainly in line with the thought of George Herbert Mead and by proxy with that of Charles Morris.

A similar circuit for volitional signs is diagrammatically completed by Martinak through the fulfilment of the wish by the listener; while Baldwin devotes over seventy pages of the second volume of his Thought and Things to language as affected by its functions in intercourse, and the relations of speaker and listener in what he calls "predication as elucidation" and "predication as proposal." (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 232)

Wow. The conative function reaches farther than I can probably go. Thought and Things, Vol. II., p. 152.

In 'good morning' and 'good-bye' the referential function lapses, i.e., these verbal signs are not symbols, it is enough if they are suitable. Exclamations and oaths similarly are not symbols; they have only to satisfy the condition of appropriateness, one of the easiest of conditions at the low-level of subtlety to which these emotional signs are developed. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 234)

Oh wow. This is the harshest statement about phatic utterances being asemantic that I've seen thus far.

Orders or commands must satisfy reference and purpose conditions, but may, indeed often must, avoid both suitability and appropriateness in the sense used above, as for instance in many military orders. Threats on the other hand can easily dispense with reference, i.e., be meaningless, and may be governed only by the purpose intended. Questions and requests are similar to commands in the respects above mentioned and differ from them merely in the means through which the effects desired are sought. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 235)

Both imperative and inquisitive are included in the conative function.

So far we have confined our attention to verbal languages, but the same distinction and the same diversity of function arise with non-verbal languages. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 236)

In other words, the semantic functions of language can be elucidated in nonverbal communication as well.

The difference between the two uses may be more exactly characterized as follows: In symbolic speech the essential considerations are the correctness of the symbolization and the truth of the references. In evocative speech the essential consideration is the character of the attitude aroused. Symbolic statements may indeed be used as a means of evoking attitudes, but when this use is occurring it will be noticed that the truth or falsity of the statements is of no consequence provided that they are accepted by the hearer. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 239)

"It tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion whether true or feigned" (Jakobson 1985[1976c]: 114).

What is required is not only strictness of definition and rigidity of expression, but also plasticity, ease and freedom in rapid expansion when expansion is needed. (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 242)

Epigraph-worthy.