Social Techniques

• Ruesch 1948 = "Experiments in Psychotherapy: I. Theoretical Considerations"
• Ruesch 1949 = "Experiments in Psychotherapy: II. Individual Social Techniques"
• Ruesch 1972[1948a] = "Social Technique, Social Status, and Social Change in Illness"
• Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a] = "Interaction Processes and Personal Codification"
• Parker 1977 = "How to Win Friends and Influence People: Dale Carnegie and the Problem of Sincerity"

Ruesch, Jurgen 1948. Experiments in Psychotherapy: I. Theoretical Considerations. The Journal of Psychology 25(1): 137-169.

Psychotherapy today is essentially an experimental investigation of the conditions and methods which are believed to change human behavior. In spite of the efforts of scientific societies to train their members uniformly in therapeutic skills and concepts, there exists a tremendous gap between what is said and what is actually don. There are almost as many methods as there are therapists. This discrepancy between accounts of the procedures and actual happenings is, in part, due to the difficulties encountered in formulating the non-verbal components of psychotherapy. It seems fair to state that a large number of factors effective in change of human behavior are non-verbal. Therefore, it seems to follow that an attempt should be made to investigate systematically the non-verbal components of psychotherapy. It is the aim of the author to prepare with this paper the theoretical grounds which will enable him and others to carry out a long-term research project in psychotherapy. (Ruesch 1948: 137)

This was of course the same guy who first used "nonverbal communication" in a book title.

The hypothesis employed in investigation of therapeutic methods rae dependent upon the theory of personality used. The hypotheses outlined below are oriented around the concept of social techniques, that is the adjustment patterns used in social interaction. Since adjustment and changes in adjustment constitute learning in the widest sense of the word, the theory was adapted also to problem of social learning. (Ruesch 1948: 137)

I knew metacommunication could easily be related to learning, but it's good to know that social techniques can be as well. I wonder how much overlap there is between these terms.

Experimental research now in progress is directed at formulating more precise the choice and timing of therapeutic procedures in relation to the specific needs and situations of the patient with special reference to the non-verbal tools used in influencing human behavior. (Ruesch 1948: 137-138)

How is this different from Dale Carnegie's teachings?

1. Freedom of physical, mental, and character symptoms indicating the successful management of internal and external conflicts. It is expressed in freedom of shame, guilt, fear, and anxiety, and appropriate channelization of anger and tension. (Ruesch 1948: 138)

I don't think I've ever seen this form of the word "channeling". Though Estonian kanaliseerimine is the exact equivalent of canalization, and more frequent.

Maturity is the result of successful growth. In the course of development the individual has to face the "biological reality" such as aging, fulfillment of reproductive functions, and facing adverse events, as well as the "cultural reality" which prescribes how these functions have to be carried out and which symbols and behavior patterns have to be used. (Ruesch 1948: 139)

The Biological Construction of Reality. I would abbreviate "biological reality" to bio-reality, since "logos about bios" refers to the field of science, rather than living matter in itself.

(a) The acquisition of general social cues deals with organization in time, space, energy economy, initiation of activity, and action bearer. Expressed in different terms one can say the child learns when and where to respond, how much of a response to make, to proceed or to wait, and to carry the response out by himself or having it carried out by others.
(b) In a second step special social cues are acquired which are related to specific situations. These are then combined in clusters and the individual learns the meaning of rôles. Basic orientations promoting the development of rôles are: (1) Intimacy or orientation along a horizontal coordinate which determines the closeness or distance to other persons. (2) Prestige or orientation along a vertical coordinate which determines superiority or inferiority of self with regard to others. (3) Identity or orientation which determines similarity or difference from others. (4) The family rôle which determines the behavior as son, daughter, brother, or sister, mate, father, or mother, and finally, as member of the in or out group. (Ruesch 1948: 141)

Useful, though I cannot think of a way to integrate these terms with phatic studies at the moment.

Social Technique: The combination of responses, cues, and rewards with regard to situations which involve human beings, results in what one might call social techniques. The emphasis of a social technique varies with its purpose, that is, with the history of its development. There are techniques designed to facilitate the practice of a certain instrumental action such as exhibitionism, for example; there are techniques stressing the rôle of an individual as superior or inferior, and there are techniques designed to handle the other person in terms of exploitation, preservation, or annihilation. (Ruesch 1948: 142)

If "social techniques" are to step in for phatic processes, then these must be considered carefully. Facilitating certain practice amounts to co-operation; role attenuation is superfluous at the moment, and the latter part about exploitation, preservation, and annihilation is completely cryptic at the moment.

Adjustment and Adaptation: Adaptation changes inherited ways of behavior through selective breeding or survival of the fittest. Adjustment is the behavior pattern used by an individual for the process of tension or excitation reduction. Maladjustment, hence, is a process which in turn does not succeed in tension reduction, but, on the contrary, leads to an increase in excitation. (Ruesch 1948: 142)

There is a definite point of contact here between social techniques as means of adjustment, Malinowski's phatic communion in terms of breaking silence and reducing tension, and D. Carnegie's whole "disarming" ordeal of smiles and enquiries about interests and happiness.

In the older age groups insight may precipitate a breakdown if an individual becomes aware of having missed out on life. Since social adjustment seems to be related to successful identification with those who fulfil their biological functions, therapy in the older age groups becomes a matter of facilitating identification with younger people, while therapy in children is related to facilitation of identification with the parents. In adults the task is essentially one of letting individuals fulfill their biological tasks and obtain gratification through real experiences rather than through identification. (Ruesch 1948: 149)

I think this kind of approach will lead to frustration when the intergenerational differences become insurmountable, perhaps due to technological or cultural development. My grandmother never did learn to use computers, even though she had almost two decades to do so. Even I am "technologically old", and this is manifest in my reluctance to use Vine, Instagram, Yik Yak, Tinder, etc. because they seem like services that children (and people who wish to be children, i.e. popular entertainers) use.

Assessment of Social Techniques: Social techniques are the techniques of mastery designed to handle interpersonal relations. Successful adjustment depends upon the number of techniques available, their flexibility, the ability of the individual to perceive relevant cues, to generalize and to discriminate, that is to perceive reality without distortions. Over-generalization, over-discrimination, distortion of existing and projection of imaginary cues into the situation, as well as lack of diversification of techniques, leads to maladjustment. Distortion of cues and rôles is easy to remedy, while individuals with few and unsatisfactory social techniques are difficult to handle. Those who only use one social technique in their human contacts can hardly be handled at all. (Ruesch 1948: 152)

There seem to be several definitions of social techniques floating around in this paper. Generalization and discrimination are defined above, and shoud be re-considered when reviewing this section. The last sentence is emphasized because D. Carnegie reportedly used only one social technique, i.e. he resolved to lengthy quotes mostly found in his books.

Hysterical types: In the hysterical type we include those individuals who use dramatization, exhibitionism, masochism, and infantilism as a means of obtaining love and affection, and as a tool of domination. They are incorporative types whose destructiveness is hidden at first. Their prevalent social technique is identification, combined with an inability to tolerate difference. They have to be identical with others. (Ruesch 1948: 153)

Is there a list of social techniques somewhere? I can't find "identification" as a separate item in any of the extensive lists in this paper. It is mentioned in relation with learning, then in terms of age (quoted above), and in the latter parts of the paper with regard to the patient's identification with the therapist.

At this high level of organization several different types of techniques can be distinguished. In approaching a person or situation the techniques are designed to test out the unknown, to attract and to appease the suspicious and hostile feelings of other persons; to unthaw or seduce, to promise or to flatter. These techniques serve the purpose to prepare the situation for the next step, namely, to establish a workable relationship between the various persons concerned. These techniques vary according to the rôle that the person assumes, but a guiding factor is the maintenance and stability of the once established relationship. From gratification of other people's wishes to establishment of common interests, from promises made for the future to implied threat in case the relationship is not maintained, there is a wide assortment of techniques. Conversely avoidance, isolation, and distance techniques are void if the establishment of a relationship shall be prevented. At times it is necessary to prepare the detachment from persons or situations when they have outlived their usefulness. Induction of fatigue or anger in the other person, making one's self unattractive and undesirable, as well as threats are frequently used for this purpose. Finally we have the techniques of annihilation used against those who do not lend themselves for establishment of a relationship. The interfering persons are annihilated either by verbal, physical or economic means. (Ruesch 1948: 156)

This is the paragraph Ruesch paraphrased (or simply shortened) for the "Synopsis". This paragraph is in effect why I took up reading this piece.

Therapist as anticipated source of affection. In this distortion the therapist is expected to give warmth, interest, advice and time. The seeking of guidance is a mere pretext inasmuch as cues are not taken over and identification does not take place. The therapist is conceived as an inexhaustible source which can be milked indefinitely, and anger arises in the patient only if this type of support is not forthcoming. (Ruesch 1948: 157)

This also applies to Carnegie's ideal businessman, who will consciously take the role of a source of affection.

The Verbalization and Echo Principle
Verbalization of the patient's adjustment pattern or formulation of what he or she did, or repetition of what the patient said means that an intellectual grasp through auditory perception is attempted. The action of the patient is verbalized (symbolized), and different rules apply to conscious perception of verbalized behavior than to action behavior itself which is unconscious. Through verbalization the patient sees himself in a stereoscopic picture of self in which action, which was extended over various places and considerable time, is condensed in order to be perceived all at once. (Ruesch 1948: 161)

Concourse, intervention type (as opposed to supervention).

The initial contact with a patient is usually characterized by a benevolent skepticism on the side of the therapist, and a friendly, slightly distant and cautious attitude on the side of the patient. If the subsequent attitudes of both therapist and patient are flexible, and if both react appropriately to the circumstances and to each other, the interaction elicits in the two persons a feeling which may be characterized by the word "rapport." Persons with strong and integrated personalities are capable of establishing better rapport than those who are unable to judge reality on its merits. (Ruesch 1948: 164)

Maybe it would benefit phatic studies if I looked into studies of rapport.

The Non-verbal Interpretation Principle
Speech in itself may on occasions not lend itself as a tool of communication. Interpretations then have to be given in terms of actions rather than words. This type of interpretation is considerably more difficult. It implies that the therapist through facial expression, gesture, implications, and actions, has to convey the meaning to the patient. This is especially true in infantile individuals who never were able to associate words with emotions or actions. In these cases therapy consists essentially in connecting for the first time emotions with verbal expressions. Communication thus is reduced to the type of interaction used with babies and pets. None the less it is a rather expressive type of communication. (Ruesch 1948: 165)

I'm considering writing a critique of local "body language experts", who take it upon themselves to connect emotions and actions in public photographs (e.g. of presidents shaking each others hands and whatnot) with verbal descriptions. The major fault in their approach is that they hold the connection between words and actions to be self-evident, given their "expertise" in body language discourse. But they neglect the fact that those photographs have their own rules, and people in those photographs are not acting naturally. This paragraph seems to hold to key to my critique: concourse in itself is insufficient.

Ruesch, Jurgen 1949. Experiments in Psychotherapy: II. Individual Social Techniques. The Journal of Social Psychology 29(1): 3-28.

In the study of personality of patients suffering from post-traumatic head syndromes, chronic disease in general, duodenal ulcer, and thyroid conditions, it became more and more apparent that in these particular psychomatic conditions social contact seemed to constitute a significant factor in occurrence, reaxercebation, and convalescence. (Ruesch 1949: 3)

His own research from mid- to late-1940-s proved this convalescence. Consequently, Ruesch is considered one of the early promulgators of psychosomatic medicine.

Since traditional personality assessment, dynamic analysis, and description of the social situations encountered by these patients did not encompass fully the features of human interaction, the concept of social technique was introduced. It can be defined as the methods used by individuals or groups for approach, management, separation, and annihilation of other people. The concept includes overt behavior in the service of interpersonal relations, the intrapsychic mechanisms used for this purpose, as well as the motive which induces a person to relate himself or herself to others. (Ruesch 1949: 3)

Here it appears that what is approached, managed, and terminated is not social contact but other people themselvels.

The evolution of the concept of social techniques reaches from ancient poet and philosopher to modern scientist. Machiavelli, for example, described the procedures of diplomacy, ruling, and domination, and men like Cervantes in Don Quixote, Goethe in Werther, Zola in Nana, illustrated beautifully a number of typical social techniques. Though the philosopher-scientists like Comte, Spencer, Le Bon, Durkheim, and Tarde were interested in group relations, they did not emphasize individual interaction. (Ruesch 1949: 3)

Doesn't "social technique" become too broad a concept in this historical overview?

The term social technique was finally coined by Tolman who emphasizes the essentially instrumental or ancillary character of the social response, which contrasts with the concepts stressing drives, needs, or traits. (Ruesch 1949: 4)

This is Tolman's "Drives Toward War" (1942: 118).

An individual is successful if his social techniques are so flexible, so perfect, and so appropriate that he can handle all the situations to be encountered. (Ruesch 1949: 10)

And Carnegie replaces this with "speaking acceptably", which is a reduction, to say the least.

Approaching, meeting, avoiding, isolating, or annihilating other people successfully requires a great deal of skill. Persons using such techniques show a high level of development and maturation, in as much as the general orientation of these individuals is directed towards the object. (Ruesch 1949: 11)

Of course Ruesch refers to Carnegie. Of course. Was it, after all, a coincidence that when I set myself to study further about social techniques I also thought of Dale Carnegie?

The technique presupposes the assessment of the own and the other person's rôle - considering simultaneously the cultural or situational frame of reference. Since operation at such a mature and sophisticated level has been described exhaustively in novels only a few examples of such techniques will be mentioned:

Approach:	Testing out. Unthawing by - display of friendliness, absence of threat. Attracting through exhibition.
Preservation:	Satisfying the other persons needs. Threatening reprisal for leaving. Indirect threat by exaggerating consequences of leaving.
Detachment:	Withdrawing reward and not satisfying needs of other person. Threatening. Isolating self or others.
Annihilation:	Symbolic through words. In reality through action.

(Ruesch 1949: 11)

It is not surprising that in later conspectus Ruesch removed "Annihilation". It makes sense that it's there early on, since Toman's book is titled Drives Toward War after all, but the suggestion that "annihilation" (in modern parlance, "ruininc") of someone else's life is even an option - be it physically or socially - is unacceptable.

Avidant techniques. The avoidance of feelings of guilt, fear, and shame in connection with social situations is the goal of this technique. The avoidant attitude is called a fear if the avoidance is concerned with high places, open spaces, water or other similar concrete situations. If, however, a person avoids intense emotions in connection with situations originally wished for, he might be called a phobic character.
The development of avoidant techniques is related to the inability of the individual to manage anxiety-producing situations. The conflict arising from the parent's prohibition and the child's wish to pursue an activity results in fear. Avoidance of fear is the next step. Gradually strict avoidance of all anxiety-producing situations may lead to "model behavior" of the child. However, the underlying instinctual impulses are obviously not gratified and management of the conflict is not attempted. The reward obtained for model behavior induces the individual to generalize his avoidant attitudes in all social contacts, his cues being the feelings of anxiety, fear, shame, or guilt which have to be avoided, rather than the cues obtained from the environment regarding like or dislike of the person or object encountered. In personal contact one finds an impoverishment of cues, a restriction of verbal communications to the conventional, and rationalization that things are done out of consideration for the other person. Subjectively, one gets the feeling of not being able to get to grips, which frequently arouses one's own anger, making the first person even more avoidant. (Ruesch 1949: 14)

I wonder if I'll ever write that Goffmanesque exposition on #avoidance I've planned for so long.

Social climbing. In social climbing individuals handle interpersonal relations in such a manner as to receive increase in prestige from their association with other people. The prerequisite of this approach is the selection of acquaintances and friends who have a higher social status. The climber always climbs up on other people as a bear does on a tree. His activities, his possessions, and his friends are selected with the purpose in mind to please the class, the clique, or the group which we wished to join. On the other hand, the people in higher social status will judge the climber by his conformance to their standards. Thus the climber subordinates all his wishes and desires to the chosen task, and lacking genuine convictions, interests, or friendships, he will as an opportunist change people, activities, and attitudes, if increase in status is connected with such a change. He impresses the public as a smooth operator, his aim being to please people with his superior status, keeping people of lower status away from himself. (Ruesch 1949: 15)

How to Win Friends with higher social status and Influence People by succumbing to their wishes, desires, and interests.

When social climbing becomes a dominant and generalized social technique, the individual does not recognize his limitations. He assumes that he can learn anything if he is intelligent and has the opportunity. But this conclusion is a fallacy. The climber was born into a different group than the one he wishes to join. It will require more energy, effort, and learning to join this group than to maintain membership if one was born into it. The older the climber gets the more difficult learning and adaptation become, and the less acquired features will be integrated into the personality structure. The term "nouveau riche" illustrates such a situation. (Ruesch 1949: 16)

Who is Tommy Wiseau? The man can't master the English language but wishes to make a groundbreaking Hollywood film, becoming a Disaster Artist in the process.

Generalization of this technique of identification can, of course, gradually lead to a "social technique of identification." It is met with especially in girls with ambivalent attitudes towards both sexes. Their childhood history frequently reveals one punitive, authoritarian, and not loving parent, and one weak, indulgent parent who gave sufficient love and who compensates for the punitiveness of the other parent. These rather immature individuals are unable to form any lasting love relationships because of their fundamentally ambivalent attitudes. On the other hand, they are socially rather in demand because of their infantilism, which renders them externally attractive and youthful. Their readiness to identify is frequently misinterpreted as seduction. Their keen interest is felt by man and woman to have aggressive and paralyzing character. They form friendships easily, but the ties are just as easily dissolved. They are not interested in machines or techniques, but in people, therefore they are found around hospitals, social and welfare agencies, and in personnel work. The initial ease of identification gradually becomes the only means of human relations. (Ruesch 1949: 19)

Isn't this a description of the type of personality that Carnegie encourages?

Ruesch, Jurgen 1972[1948a]. Social Technique, Social Status, and Social Change in Illness. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Semiotic Approaches to Human Relations. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 158-172.

Character formation is the result of interaction between the individual and his environment, and the most important factors in the environment are human beings. In disease, human contact is not only responsible for the spreading of epidemics, but the eotions elicited during and after interaction between persons may influence exacerbation of and recovery from illness. Duodenal ulcer cases, for example, demonstrate clearly the relationship between interpersonal relations and disease. (Ruesch 1972[1948a]: 158)

Psychosomatics. Also, modern psychology is bent on researching the connection between social isolation and various illnesses. This connection could be written about more extensively. I'm not sure how much Ruesch is referred to in such research, but a Rueschian approach could very well be possible.

Interaction between human beings can be conceived as being the result of social techniques of the individuals involved. The term social technique, therefore, would include all the methods used by an individual in approaching, managing, and handling other persons. Among the various interpersonal approaches known to be used in adulthood, we can distinguish between the long term techniques on the one hand, and those used as interpersonal tactics or the short term techniques on the other. Under long term techniques, one might mention social climbing or prestige seeking, maintenance of superiority and dominance, nurturance (mothering or fathering), conformance, co-operation, competition, rivalry, dependence, social decline, self-abasive, avoidant, isolating, aggressive-destructive techniques, and acquisition or use of others. Among the short term techniques one might mention testing out, unthawing, startling, joking, teasing, flattering, offending, seducing, threatening, bribing, and pitying. Though space precludes in this article to describe techniques in any detail, there are a few common factors worthy of consideration. (Ruesch 1972[1948a]: 158-159)

I'm more interested in short term techniques. But I wonder if it would be a good idea to compare Ruesch's social techniques with Marcel Mauss's "techniques of the body".

The observation, the nature, and the management of cues is largely a social and cultural function. The cue, so to speak, constitutes the link between culture and individual. What makes persons of one and the same culture alike is the awareness, observation, and response to the same cues. A cue can be defined as a symbol or signal perceived in a complex situation which in helpful in solving the problem for the individual. It serves the purpose to reinforce or attenuate drives. (Ruesch 1972[1948a]: 159)

Although I'm a bit dismissive of the four essential components of social techniques (drive, cue, response, and reward) because it's too behaviouristic for my taste, this bit here about the sociocultural nature of the cue could aid in integrating the intercultural facets of phaticity in a sensible manner.

The individual may have learned the necessary responses to master life, but the cues change their meaning from culture to culture. It follows that the more diversified and flexible the techniques of an individual are, the more likely he is to survive in the new environment. The learning of additional cues, the reinterpretation of existing cues, and the relearning of multiple cues and roles can be successful if the individual is able to fall back upon a backlog of diversified responses. If, however, cues and responses are neither diversified nor flexible, acculturation is difficult or impossible. In addition, the same response may be rewarded in one culture and punished in another. (Ruesch 1972[1948a]: 168)

What is needed is flexibility, adaptability, and a constant learning of novel metacommunicative means.

Ruesch, Jurgen and A. Rodney Prestwood 1972[1950a]. Interaction Processes and Personal Codification. In: Sebeok, Thomas A. (ed.), Semiotic Approaches to Human Relations. The Hague; Paris: Mouton, 305-344.

Communization and communication are directly subservient to the social needs of an individual and indirectly subservient to the physiological needs. Biologically, social contact is a prerequisite for procreation and raising of children. Sharing and co-operation are the result of communication; they extend the sphere of influence of an individual and help to overcome the limitations of a single person. In our modern Western civilization, shelter, food, and care of infectious disease, etc., have freed the individual from worrying too much about satisfying his physiological needs. However, his social needs are increasingly greater and more involved. Today's problems of mental health are therefore more often related to disturbances in the sphere of social needs and mechanisms of communication than to disturbances of physiological needs. It follows that the contribution of the psychiatrist towards helping his patients to achieve successful social interaction consists of aiding them to master the appropriate means of communication. (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 326)

Thus, both communication and communization, as well as sharing and co-operation, serve mechanisms of preservation.

Expressed in more abstract terms, one might say that initially a directional factor is assessed dealing with proximity and distance of events in space and time, predicting approach and withdrawal of persons and likely influence of their actions. A second set of observations deals with information related to self-preservation or violation or violation of bodily integrity or its social extensions. Assessment will determine whether or not the other person is apt to trespass onto one's own body or territory and whether interference processes are necessary to cope with the situation. Only when interference processes have been ruled out are processes of communication likely to proceed. (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 326-327)

This is where phaticity meets territoriality (or, specifically, proxemics).

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. This establishes certain bonds of good feeling, bringing people together into a group. (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327)

Bonds of good feeling or bonds of personal union? It does seem that Ruesch took over Morris's term but applied it on Malinowski's phatic communion.

Communization cannot wholly substitute for communication. But it does establish a common, though incomplete, frame of reference under which premises interaction can proceed. (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327)

The overall effect of communization.

Next comes the clarification and establishment of a mutual frame of reference which consists essentially of checking whether the other participants have a concept of oneself; their "you" should coincide with what one think of oneself, the "me". In other words, participants must attempt to verify the characteristics attributed to other persons, in order to have a clear picture of reality. If this can be done successfully by all participants a common frame of reference is established. Each person then understands the function of the other. Once this preliminary clarification has taken place, the individual frame as well as the common frame of reference established, the transmission of messages can proceed smoothly. (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327)

Is this "reality testing"? Because it sounds like "history taking". The point being that you first form certain impressions of other people and then attempt to verify these impressions.

Communication is the process through which intentions, feelings, and thoughts of one person are transmitted to another. Prerequisite to such process is a wish to communicate. Most people with a motivation in favor of communication have at their disposal necessary means for converting thoughts and feelings into signals so that they may be perceived and understood by the other person. In successful communication the person transmitting a message is especially concerned with the effects of the message and whether it has been received and understood in a satisfactory manner. In communication, therefore, we deal with a circulation process, in which a message is transmitted, its impact upon the receiver is observed, and only when the sender is fully satisfied with the perception, and the receiver with the sending, can the cycle be considered completed. In contrast, people who engage in unsuccessful communication are those who tend to send, or broadcast only, without regard for reception and audience. (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 328)

Compare to "willingness to communicate" in the Relevance Theory approach to phatics. Also, the latter part about broadcasting should apply conversely to Dale Carnegie's ideal "receiver only" (a good conversationalist who primarily just listens).

Co-operative interaction is the result of a long series of preliminary processes consisting of various assessments, possibly communization, and ultimately communication. In co-operative interaction the participants in a social situation are willing to accept their roles and to implement these roles with appropriate action. The implementation of successful communication serves two purposes. First, it is intended to gratify basic and usually physiological needs of an individual. Secondly, it is intended to gratify through co-operative interaction social needs such as recognition, group membership, and the like. Thus, in co-operative interaction the multipolar determination of roles will lead to actions meaningful to several persons, which will insure gratification of various needs. Once such a co-operative system will insure gratification of various needs. Once such a co-operative system has been established, self-regulatory mechanisms tend to perpetuate its existence, at least so long as it insures the gratification of these needs. (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 328)

Could "recognition" here stand for Carnegie's need to feel important?

Parker, Gail Thain 1977. How to Win Friends and Influence People: Dale Carnegie and the Problem of Sincerity. American Quarterly 29(5): 506-518.

DALE CARNEGIE NEVER BECAME AN EASY CONVERSATIONALIST, ACCORDING tho those who met him after he left the farm. In fact, he had a tendency to speak "in quotations, along with the qualifying phrases, mostly from his book, which he knows by heart." Even a cursory reading of How to Win Friends and Influence People suggests that the man whose name has become synonymous with a practical garrulity was never genuinely articulate. (Parker 1977: 506-507)

In this Carnegie is of course not an exception. It seems to be a common motive in this kind of discourse that people who are well versed in theory are rarely as well apt in practice. For example, I recall seeing a youtube video of Mark Bowden, the author of an excellent book on nonverbal communication preaching the virtues of confidence, all the while the man himself on video looks nervous, anxious, and sweaty.

In the name of a newly anti-romantic rhetoric, he reduced words themselves to gestures so that patterns of speech could be learned and relied on to affect an audience in predictable ways. For Carnegie, language was a means of conveying attitudes, not ideas, and a smile was easily worth a thousand words. When you smiled you disarmed a potential enemy. When you smiled and asked him what he thought, you proved yourself a brilliant conversationalist. And when you smiled and asked him what he wanted out of life, you had discovered the secret of selling, whether cemetery lots or yourself. (Parker 1977: 507)

It's because these questions are "disarming", isn't it? There's a very short step from here to the sexual predator with a video camera who first elicits women to talk about their sex lives and then elicits them to have sex with them for money. (I'm thinking of the pornographic series titled Public Invasion.)

It is not difficult to imagine why his advice was appealing, particularly when proffered in a classroom setting. The price of admission to a Carnegie course included a willingness on the part of each student to admit that he, like the adolescent Carnegie, worried about knowing what to say. Salesman who feared to knock on clients' doors, Rotarians eager to learn the secrets of the after-lunch speech, and clubwomen uneasy about chairing a meeting were (and are) the kinds of people who enrolled in Dale Carnegie's course. There they found others willing to admit to their own worst fears, and a protected environment in which to try out new presentations of self. Carnegie had discovered the power of the support group. (Parker 1977: 507)

A protected environment? Surely you mean a safe space?

In both substance and style, How to Win Friends and Influence People refrected the need felt by millions of twentieth-century Americans to develop a new kind of social radar and to learn those scanning and transmitting skills that Riesman, Glazer, and Denney have described as characteristic of the other-directed personality. (Parker 1977: 508)

This I noticed also. In contrast to the pathalogical case of the "broadcaster" who is only interested in speaking, Dale Carnegie encourages the kind of communication strategy focused on listening, only.

Dale Carnegie believed that if you paused to define a concept you risked losing your audience. Words for him were simply part of slogans; nuance, context, anything that might help the historian discover the precise origin of his ideas was pruned away in the interest of "straight talk." (Parker 1977: 508)

It may also be so because he hired a researcher to do the intellectual heavy lifting for him.

Carnegie was not interested in ideas, but rather in signals. For him the question of what to say to a new bride could be answered in terms of sign language, some combination of phrases and smiles that would suggest "I am capable, potent, able to provide." The connection in his mind between the ability to speak and the ability to assume one's place in the world as a man, between keeping up a conversation and everything else, is clear in his reminiscences. While other boys were stirred by tales of physical daring or financial legerdemain, Carnegie's ambitions were stimulated by the sight and sound of a Chauptauqua lecturer, a large man in a white collar whose lift seemed to consist of applause and train travel. Listening to his mellifluous voices, Carnegie realized the value of never being at a loss for pleasing words. Eventually he outgrew the fear that Sam White would cut off his ears, but he continued to believe that survival itself might depend on knowing just what, and what not, to say. (Parker 1977: 509)

He might have begotten the trend in communication theory that places emphasis on the survival value of communication. Even Jurgen Ruesch is not free of this sentiment.

If you smiled, looked people in the eye, and expressed an interest in what they were feeling, if you never snarled, nagged, attacked, or asserted your rights, you could survive. And as an American survivor you might hope for a nice car, a nice wife, and a nice home in a garden suburb. The rewards for improving your social radar were not the satisfaction of deep personal needs, but the maintenance of comfort and appearances. (Parker 1977: 510-511)

I think this is so because his book was oriented towards businessmen and their particular communication situation - an approaching man with something to sell who wishes to disarm you and come across as friendly so that you won't punish him for the approach and breach of otherwise dominant protocol of non-interference.

Meta-phatics (5)

For an index of other posts in this series, jump to the end of this post. This one reviews the following sources:

• Ashwin 1984 = "Drawing, Design and Semiotics"
• Helbo 1981 = "The Semiology of Theater, Or: Communication Swamped"
• Reiss 1981 = "Type, Kind and Individuality of Text: Decision Making in Translation"
• Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007 = "Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques in German Media Studies"
• Babby 1982 = "Alexandre Chenevert: Prisoner of Language"
• Henstra 2000 = "Looking the Part: Performative Narration in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and Katherine Mansfield's "Je Ne Parle Pas Français""
• Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015 = "A Pluralist View about Information"
• Hess & Fischer 2013 = "Emotional Mimicry as Social Regulation"
• Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012 = "Social Class Disparities in Health and Education: Reducing Inequality by Applying a Sociocultural Self Model of Behavior"
• Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015 = "Social Network Approaches to Leadership: An Integrative Conceptual Review"

Ashwin, Clive 1984. Drawing, Design and Semiotics. Design Issues 1(2): 42-52.

However, there are historical and cultural reasons why verbal discourse about drawing has remained in an unnecessarily primitive nad undeveloped state compared with other fields such as law or medicine. (Ashwin 1984: 42)

Likewise there should be consideration as to why phatic studies has remained in such "an unnecessarily primitive and undeveloped state".

This article reviews semiotics, the science of signs, as a possible intellectual groundwork for developing a theory of drawing. Drawing as a system of signs has important cultural origins that are reflected in etymology. The German Zeichen, meaning sign, gives us zeichnen for the verb to draw, that is to make signs. Similar connections can be seen in the Italian segno (sign), disegno (drawing, design), and disegnatore (designer). The English drawing takes its form from the action of pulling, which is characteristic of so much drawing activity, but a similar etymological link can be seen in the words sign and design. (Ashwin 1984: 42-43)

I'd like to take semiotics as the "intellectual groundwork" for phatic studies as well, but I'm not sure how well that would fare in the general scheme of things. The etymological portion here is commendable.

Having introduced the tripartite division of signs into indexes, icons, and symbols, the functions of communication via sign systems can be discussed with special reference to their relevance to drawing for design. It has been claimed that sign systems serve at least six principal functions. A message (drawing) may be referential in that it attempts to describe or communicate a form or idea in an objective and dispassionate a manner as possible. It may be emotive in that it attempts to communicate certain subjective responses of the emitter in terms of, for example, excitement, attraction or repulsion for the thing depicted. It may be conative (or injuctive) in that it persuades or exhorts the receiver to respond and behave in a certain way. It may be poetic in that the principal intention is not to communicate facts or influence behavior, but to create an intrinsically admirable (or beautiful) self-justifying form. A phatic communication is one that does not attempt to record or communicate facts, views, or information, but serves as a means of initiating, maintaining, or concluding communication between the emitter and the receiver. (Expressions such as "Hullo, can you hear me?" are not so much requests for information as ways of maintaining discourse.) Communication may also be metalinguistic, created for the express purpose of clarifying other signs, which may be in the same or another medium. A good example is the key provided on a map. (Ashwin 1984: 45-46)

This author has, presumably quite innocently, caught on to the fact that Jakobson's linguistic functions pertain to various sub-systems of language, or simply "sign systems". Notice also the variants in the three-partite overall effects (initiating and concluding).

Signs may be characterized as having three possible levels of specificity. Monosemic systems offer only one correct interpretation; other interpretations are not viable alternatives: they are considered mistaken and wrong. Hence, cartographic signs and engineering drawings are predominantly monosemic. Polysemic systems offer more than one legitimate interpretation. Hence a figurative drawing of a car for an advertisement might evoke a variety of acceptable responses from interpreters, such as speed, power, reliability, and so forth. However, although the range of permissible responses might be wide, it is not infinite, and many would be rejected by the emitter (draughtsman) as wrong or unintended. Pansemic systems offer apparently unlimited possibilities of interpretation, a good example being much nonfigurative drawing and painting. It is impossible in this case to reject any reading of the communication as equivocally wrong or unacceptable. (Ashwin 1984: 46)

What is this? Where is this from?

The phatic function - Phatic communications are easy enough to find in speech. Expressions such as "Ah, well" and interjections such as "sort of" or "of course" serve principally as signals to maintain discourse or dialogue and have little or no intrinsic meaning. Much more complex statements might nevertheless be essentially phatic in function. Opening a public speech with "Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking" or closing a travelog wit h"and so we say farewell to" are examples of phatic utterances masquerading as referential communication. Although phatic utterances easily degenerate to cliches and can become a source of humor and an object of ridicule, they do serve an important purpose in initiating, maintaining, redirecting, concluding communication. Anyone who has ever tried to eliminate everything redundant from his speech will appreciate what a strain it places on the speaker and what curious language it can produce. (Ashwin 1984: 50)

This touches on two important points. Firstly, phaticity is elusive. Anything and everything seems to hold the potential to become phatic. And secondly, not unrelatedly, as Burnard (2003) in the previous post emphasized, there is indeed a kind of "negotiation" between phatic and non-phatic conversation, which here is captured in the term "redirection".

Phatic communications play an important role in many areas of drawing for design. The presence (or absence) of framing devices such as lines and rules and the deplayment of graphic motifs such as arrows are extensively used to capture and direct the attention of spectators. Drawing for comic papers has generated an immensely complicated semiotic code rich in phatic devices and signs. These signs include special ways of framing drawing to indicate the relation between separate frames, and devices such as lines, arrows, nad escapements are used to maintain movement, change location, shift focus, and direct the narrative. From a purely semiotic point of view, comic papers constitute one of the most complex and sophisticated areas of drawn communication. (Ashwin 1984: 50-51)

It would appear that in the visual medium it cannot help but boil down to management and direction of attention, much like in Paul Virilio's concept of the phatic image.

Helbo, André 1981. The Semiology of Theater, Or: Communication Swamped. Poetics Today 2(3): 105-111.

in the chapter devoted to theater in his Introduction à la sémiologie, Mounin declares that the postulate which states that theater can be approached directly sub specie communicationis is unacceptable; "[...] this would assume that those very problems were resolved which scrupulous and complex analysis of the theatrical spectacle should reveal first, define afterwards, explore within the full range of the data, then perhaps begin to solve" (1971: 87). (Helbo 1981: 105)

I agree. The "communicationalization" of various areas of the cultural sphere often gets out of hand. Communication is everywhere, but not everything is communication.

Reduction to the conative function does not seem sufficient to characterize the theatrical phenomenon. We will demonstrate, with the example of a particular theatrical code, the set, that this function is inseparable from the phatic function and that it is integrated into a process which can be qualified as communicative without thereby answering to the norms which Mounin proposes. (Helbo 1981: 107)

I have no idea what is going on here. I begin to remember how much I detest "French" discourse. You know the one. The one that makes no damn sense. Is the proposition here that the conative function is inseparable from the phatic function?

In this bipolarity one recognizes Prieto's (1972) distinction between the notificative indication and the significant indication (the first being a signal indicating to the receiver that the sender intends to transmit a message to him; the second indicates to the receiver that the meaning which the sender is trying to establish figures among those which the receiver can accept, and indicates a class of possibilities and its predicate as a function of circumstances). (Helbo 1981: 108)

As much as this sounds like "willingness to communicate" in Relevance Theory approach to phatics, I really don't "get" this. What's the context? Nope, can't read Messages et signaux.

Thus, the set communicates to the public the form and content of the location where text and performance acquire their meaning. The public's attention (and eventually the signal that the receiver has understood the communication: applause, whistling, muttering) are the response to this communication. (Helbo 1981: 108)

Does the author realize that if the bracketed interjection is removed then the sentence is not grammatically correct? "The public's attention [...] are the response to this communication" is not proper English. I agree that there's an element of phaticity (emphasis on contact) in applause, whistling, and muttering, but there seems to be no real theory here. On an illustrative note, I recently watched Dylan Moran's Off The Hook and he ordered the audience to stop clapping (and laughing) by telling them something to the effect of "Believe me, I know you're there."

As Franco Ruffini notes (1974: 37), "communication on the part of one of the interlocutors can be limited to the phatic function [...] which in general utilizes a different code from that of the other interlocutor." (Helbo 1981: 108)

What? No.

Reiss, Katharina 1981. Type, Kind and Individuality of Text: Decision Making in Translation. Poetics Today 2(4): 121-131.

The use of two natural languages as well as the employment of the medium of the translator necessarily and naturally result in a change of message during the communicative process. The theoretician of communication, Otto Haseloff (1969), has pointed out that an "ideal" communication is rare even when one single language is employed, because the addressee always brings his own knowledge and his own expectations, which are different from those of the addresser. H. F. PLett (1975) calls this factor the "communicative difference." (Reiss 1981: 121)

This is actually a pretty good addendum to Lotman's so-called "communication model".

Action is intentional behavior in a given situation (Vermeer, 1972). "Intention" means here speech purpose, speech aim, motive leading to language communication (Lewandowski, 1973-5: 288). Through the intention, verbalized by the author in his text, this text receives a communicative function for the process of communication. (Reiss 1981: 122)

Actually a good point. In textual communication, the statement of purpose, aim or intention is phatic in the sense that it is essentially a communication about contact, specifically the given communicative contact pursued in and through the very same text. These include statements like "I'm writing this because..." and "I need to say something..."

Torn out of its original socal context - now a historical report and also translated as such = informative text; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels - satire on contemporary social ills = expressive text with an operative secondary function; today only recognizable in this function by the experts specializing in this period; for the ordinary reader (also of the original) - a fantastic adventure tale = expressive text.) (Reiss 1981: 123)

This may contain a very crucial point in the functionalist sense. Perhaps most phatic utterances were originally emotive expressions but through conventionalisation became routine verbal politenesses.

Additional types? Bühler's three functions of the linguistic sign, in analogy to which I have isolated the three main text functions, are extended by Roman Jakobson to include the phatic and the poetic functions. Would both of these functions be suitable to isolate text types relevant to the choice of a translating method? Not so, in my opinion! Related to entire texts and not only to single language elements, the phatic function ( = the establishment and maintenance of contact) is realized in all three of the basic forms of communication, i.e., the phatic function does not lead to particulars of the text construction.
For instance:
Picture postcard from a holiday: informative text with phatic function
Self-composed birthday poem: expressive text with phatic functionMemory aid in an advertisement slogan: operative text with phatic function
The phatic function does not arise from the text form, but from the use to which the text is put. (Reiss 1981: 125)

Exactly the reason why we don't hear anything about the phatic function from Jakobson after he enlisted it among his cardinal functions. In the broad scheme of things it was a mistake. The phatic function does indeed not have any concrete linguistic features - it does not appear on the phonological, or perhaps even lexical level. It is present in the pragmatic use, though. This author has caught on to something really true which I don't think I've seen anyone else, besides me, notice or remark about.

Siegert, Bernhard and Geoffrey Winthrop-Young 2007. Cacography or Communication? Cultural Techniques in German Media Studies. Grey Room 29: 26-47.

In Germany, media history is in fact an umbrella term that encompasses a motley crew of methods; as a result, there is a lot of confusion that is partly intended, partly condoned, and partly condemned. (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 28)

Good phrase is good. Can apply equally to the "triviality" of phaticity.

It is probably no coincidence, therefore, that the term cultural techniques (re)emerged around the turn of the millennium and soon become ubiquitous in German media theory. The notion of cultural techniques strategically subverts the problematic dualism of media and culture; it opens up media, culture, and technology to further discussion by highlighting the operations or operative sequneces that historically and logically precede the media concepts generated by them:

Cultural techniques - such as writing, reading, painting, counting, making music - are always older than the concepts that are generated from them. People wrote long before they conceptualized writing or alphabets; millennia passed before pictures and statues gave rise to the concept of the image; and still today, people sing or make music without knowing anything about tones or musical notation systems. Counting, too, is older than the notion of numbers. To be sure, most cultures counted or performed certain mathematical operations, but they did not necessarily derive from this a concept of number.

Once we reconstruct those operative sequences that configure or constitute media, the latter can be explained as cultural techniques. Cultural techniques, however, are not limited to symbolic practices based on images, writing systems, and numbers. They also include what Marcel Mauss termed "body techniques"; that is, the use cultures make of bodies, including rites, customs, and habitual acts as well as training and disciplinary systems, dietetics, or hygienic practices. From this ethnological point of view, reading, writing, and counting are physical rather than mental techniques. They are the result of drilling docile bodies, which these days are forced to compete with interactive navigational instruments. (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 29)

This surely must be considered if the concept of phatic techniques is to have any academic value whatsoever. Just like these illustrations, contact for the sake of contact has existed perhaps as long as human beings have communicated at all, but it is only in the 20th century that a concept emerges to capture this aspect of human existence. Consequently, we are finding more and more aspects to this phenomena and attempting to outline and detail the ways in which people do achieve "togetherness" through verbalization.

What strikes me as revealing from the point of view of the history of theory, however, is the fact that Serres's conceptualization of the parasite was a reevaluation (carried out under the influence of Claude Shannon) of the Bühler-Jakobson model of communication that allowed Serres to sketch out a concept of cultural techniques capable of combining different methods and approaches. (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 32)

Yup, the French are indeed overly fond of Bühler and Jakobson, sometimes to their detriment.

The concept of the parasite implies a critique of occidental philosophy, in particular of those theories of the linguistic sign and economic relationships that in principle never ventured beyond a bivalent logic (subject-object, sender-receiver, producer-consumer) and that inevitably conceives of these relationships in terms of exchanges. Serres enlarged this structure into a trivalent logic. Let there be two stations and one channel connecting both. The parasite that attaches itself to this relation assumes the position of the third. Unlike the linguistic tradition from Locke and Searle and Haberman, Serres does not view deviation - that is, the parasite - as accidental. We do not start out with a relation that is then disturbed or even interrupted; rather, "[t]he deviation is part of the thing itself, and perhaps it even produces the thing." (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 32-33)

This makes scary amounts of sense. Especially in relation with my so-called "transcommunication model", the medium (in computer mediated communication) becomes this kind of parasite, at least once we can speak of self-aware artificial intelligence than mediates our messages. It is not out of the question that Google, which simultaneously develops Artificial Intelligence and mediates our e-mail exchanges (and hosts this blog) will embody this transcommunicational Third in the future (if it doesn't already without our knowledge).

In Serres's model of communication it is not the sender-receiver relationship that is fundamental but that between communication and noise. This corresponds to the definition of the culture-technical turn outlined above: From the point of view of this turn, media are code-generating interfaces between the real that cannot be symbolized and cultural orders. "To hold a dialogue," Serres wrote in 1964, "is to suppose a third man and to seek to exclude him." Thus Serres inverts the hierarchy of the six sign functions in Jakobson's famous model. It is not the poetic or the referential function that (according to the type of speech) dominates all the others but the phatic function, the reference to the channel. In all communication, each expression, appeal, and type of referencing is preceded by a reference to interruption, difference, deviation. "With this recognition the phatic function becomes the constitutive occasion for all communication, which can thus no longer be conceptualized in the absence of difference and delay, resistance, static, and noise." (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 33)

There is a kernel of truth to this, but even beyond the philosophical hoopla it's noteworthy that "reference to the channel" is an apt paraphrase of "set for CONTACT", and better captures the real crux of the matter that few have really caught on to. Phatic speech is not meaningless speech. It is speech about contact.

The phatic function - that particular function of the sign that addresses the channel - was the last of the six functions introduced by Jakobson in 1956. Its archeology reveals the culture-technical dimension of the communication concept. It was first described in 1923 by Bronisław Malinowski, though he spoke of "phatic communion." (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 33)

All true. Despite being "Frenchy" writers they get a lot right. In fact, I would go so far as to say that among the many dozens of short definitions/descriptions of this kind, this one here is the one that captures most with fewest words.

"Phatic communion," however, denotes a linguistic function in the course of which words are not used to coordinate actions, and certainly not to express thoughts, but in which a community is constituted by means of exchanging meaningless utterances. When it comes to sentences like "How do you do?" "Ah, here you are," or "Nice day today," language appears to be completely independent of the situational context. Yet a real connection does exist between phatic communication and situation, because in the case of this particular type of language the situation is one of an "atmosphere of sociability" involving the speaker but created by the utterances. (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 34)

Right again. I'm especially impressed that the context of situation is emphasized without being completely quotidian. It is indeed the connection between phatic communion and the social situation that is at the crux of the matter: in phatic communion there are no other obligations than the linguistic one, there is free time, there is pleasure invested in communicating for the sake of communicating.

The situation of phatic communion is therefore not extralinguistic as in the case of a fighting expedition; it is the creation of the situation itself. It is a mode of language in which the situation as such appears or in which language thematizes the "basis of relation."
Malinowski's discussion of phatic communion bears a remarkable resemblance to Serres's theory of communication, according to which communication is not the transmission of meaning but the exclusion of a third. (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 34)

Okay, what does this "exclusion of a third" mean? You've suddenly lost me.

Malinowski's parallel between the communion of food and the communication of words establishes an intrinsic connection between eating and speaking that is also apparent in Serres's model of the parasite. For Malinowski as well as for Serres, to speak in the mode of "phatic communion" is at first merely an interruption - the interruption of silence in Malinowski's anthropological model and the interruption of background noise in Serres's information-theoretical model. Communication is the exclusion of a third, the oscillation of a system between order and chaos. The link between Malinowski's phatic communion and Serres's "being of relation" (i.e., the parasite) is Jakobson's functional scheme that short-circuits the channel (in the sense of Shannon's information theory) with Malinowski's "ties of union": "The phatic function is in fact the point of contact between anthropological linguistics and the technosciences of information theory." (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 34)

Interruption of silence, yeah. Oscillation between order and chaos, yup. But what is this stuff about short-circuiting the channel? Sure, the phatic function is the contact between anthropological linguistics and the technosciences of information theory. But what does that give us? Even more, the source for that last quote is a fucking lecture. Clarke, Bruce 1999. Constructing the Subjectivity of the Quasi-Object: Serres through Latour. Lecture presentet at Construction of the Self: The Poetics of Subjectivity. University of South Carolina. It's starting to look, at this point, like the authors just threw a bunch of shit together and crossed their fingers that it made sense.

On his way to the court of the Ottoman emperor in 1555, Ogier Chiselin de Busbecq, an ambassador for the Austrian monarch Ferdinand I, discovered on the wall of a temple (to be precise, of a Sebasteion) in the prescinct of the Haci Beiram Mosque in Angora (Ankara) a Latin inscription that he identified as a copy of the famous Index rerum gestarum, the account of the achievements of Augustus written by the emperor himself. Busbecq only needed to read the heading:

RERVM GESTARVM DIVI AVGVSTI QVIBVS ORBEM TERRARUM IMPERIO POPVLI ROMANI SVBIECIT ETINPENSARVM QVAS INREM PVBLICAM POPVLVMQVE ROMANVM FECIT INCISARVM INDVABVS AHENEIS PILIS QVAE SVNT ROMAE POSITAE EXEMPLAR SVBIECTVM.
(Belom is a copy of the acts of the Deified Augustus by which he placed the whole world under the sovereignty of the Roman people, and of the amounts which he expended upon the state and the Roman people, as engraved upon two bronze columns which have been set up in Rome.)

The discovery of this monument of occidental cultural history, which the nineteenth-century historian Theodor Mommsen called the "queen of inscriptions," was by no means accidental. Throughout his journey through the Balkans and Asia Minor, Busbecq had been trying to communicate with classical antiquity. His media of communication were inscriptions and coins. (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 35-36)

Oh lord. I imagine this is approximately how the Americans must feel at the moment. They've conquered almost the whole world with their cultural imperialism. Now we'll wait a couple of centuries for a certain John Doe to traverse these Eastern European lands and stumble upon a stencil graffiti of Edgar Allan Poe in what used to be Poe (possessive form of "Shop" in Estonian) street.

The channel, the parasite, is not supplementary, but rather the ground for the aperationality of numerals. (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 38)

Replace "numerals" with "communication" and you have something that makes sense.

Babby, Ellen R. 1982. Alexandre Chenevert: Prisoner of Language. Modern Language Studies 12(2): 22-30.

His inability to capture thought, to transform it into language, tragically results in another type of imprisonment: that of prescribed linguistic formulae. Alexandre has already written the opening salutation of his letter; he has no difficulty with conventional discourse. (Babby 1982: 25)

Halfway through the paper we're inching toward the phati function. Not that I'm complaining - this literary analysis is a pleasurable read in itself, even though I don't understand French.

Alexandre's own discourse rarely performs a communicative function. Rather than being an istrument of reflection, his speech is often a purely mechanistic "mode of action". The degree to which his discourse is void of content is reflected in his use of verbal and non-verbal phatic language, language in which emphasis is not on transmitting thought, but rather on establishing and maintaining contact. In phatic language, the actual meaning of the discourse is irrelevant. This "aimless social intercourse" may include phrases of politeness, inquiries about health, comments on the weather, etc. Alexandre's conversation with M. Fontaine, his superior, provides a poignant example: "Quel ciel! quelle couleur! s'exclama Alexandre dont le coeur battait toujours assez fort dès qu'il s' obligeait par bienséance à adresser quelques mots à son directeur" (292). (Italics mine) This coerced speech is, according to Emil Benveniste, "at the limit of dialogue." Void of substance, it is a mere exchange of words. (Babby 1982: 26)

These are very common (meta-)phaticisms, but the fabric woven of them presents a poetry of its own. It's actually pretty nice how this author is able to transform very commonplace theoretical statements about phatic communion into a texture that I, at least, enjoy for aesthetic merits.

Within the city, spatial freedom is once again extinct. Alexandre becomes immobilized in crowded streets and busses. Sign systems, both linguistic and extralinguistic, bombard him with directives. Traffic signals and regulations control his very movements. The imprisoning nature of language becomes concretized through the overwhelming presence of imperatives which often assume privileged positions on the printed page. Italics and capital letters serve to amplify the force of these dictatures. (Babby 1982: 27)

Here we are dealing with the conative function, that of commands. It is true, the cityscape is filled with commanding language, of verbs directing or instructing you to do this or that. I think I should actually take some time to travelse around Tartu and, like Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq in the previous paper, take up lectio "in the double meaning of collecting and reading" (Siegert & Winthrop-Young 2007: 36) and just note down every verbal command on every sign and inscription I come across. It might be a fun exercise.

The problem of communication in Alexandre Chenevert has been discussed by many critics: Cf. particularly: Ben Zion Shek, Social Realism in French Canada (Montréal: Harvest House, 1977); Fronçois Ricard, Gabrielle Roy (Montréal: Fides, 1975); Marc Cagné, Visages de Gabrielle Roy: L'oeuvre et l'écrivain (Montréal: Beauchemin, 1973). However, this problem has not been examined in terms of the problematic deteriorating signifier. (Babby 1982: 30; note 12)

Is that what phaticity is to you? I am offended. And aroused. This is idea of phaticity is "Frenchified" to the extreme.

Roman Jakobson, Essais de linguistique gènèrale (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1963), p. 217. We shall presently limit our discussion to verbal phatic language. However, nonverbal phatic language acts are also manifest. The bringing of flowers to his wife in the hospital is a precise example. (Babby 1982: 30; note 13)

Funny how these sorts of notes can catch you by surprise. Yes, gifting flowers is indeed a nonverbal form of "phatic" communication. (The quotation marks, I think, are needed because "nonverbal phatic language" is multiply oxymoronic (nonverbal + etymologically "speech" and nonverbal + language).

Henstra, Sarah 2000. Looking the Part: Performative Narration in Djuna Barnes's Nightwood and Katherine Mansfield's "Je Ne Parle Pas Français". Twentieth Century Literature 46(2): 125-149.

Matthew and Raoul seem strangely alert to the staged or rehearsed quality of language in general and of their own identities in particular; the burden of this awareness places them at an unusual junction of narratorial trajectories. (Henstra 2000: 126)

You mean the conventionalisation of phatic utterances?

Further, self-centeredness, self-consciousness, and self-contradiction are not wholly reducible to self-delusion in these narratives. (Henstra 2000: 129)

An award for most self- terms is necessary. This should surely be nominated.

When Dick abandons him, Raoul identifies his hurt as feminine, explaining, "I felt as a woman must feel when a man takes out his watch and remembers an appointment that cannot possibly concern her, except that its claim is the stronger" (94). (Henstra 2000: 132)

I can't yet explain why but this feels extremely touching.

Matthew's narration sets up a series of images to convey the relationship between the individual and the cartographic activity that delimits fields of social viability and unviability. His aphorism "Man has no foothold that is not also a bargain" (32) comments on the sacrifice or loss involved in taking one's place within the social landscape. (I take the word bargain here to mean a transaction of exchange rather than a good deal.) (Henstra 2000: 135)

Again: good literature, good phrases. Might work as an epigraph for the topic of phatic negotiation.

The statement implies something more than that the doctor uncovers the mapping process of regulatory discourse, as we have already examined; Felix's observation alludes to the way Matthew's fabulous lies effect a sedimentation of meaning which for the listener or reader builds slowly into an intrareferential mythological system. (Henstra 2000: 139)

These are some pretty vacuous, scientific-sounding phrases. Kudos for quasi-intellectuality.

A form of gesture deployed far more frequently in "Je Ne Parle Pas Français" than in Nightwood is the phatic statement. Roman Jakobson defines the phatic as a "contact function" in language, "serving primarily to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication" between speaker and interlocutor (355). Phatic statements are primitive, elementary specimens of discourse, used by talking birds and babies, but they are also metalingual, insofar as they address the code of address (for example, "What do you mean by that?") (356). To call the phatic a gestural form is to notice its attempt in the text to make contact with the narratee through a temporal and spatial collapse of the distance between speaker and spoken. In other words, the phatic is explicit about the circularity between who is being performed through an utterance and who is doing the performing. Raoul's speech performs and reiterates him as a (textual, narrative) subject who is cast as prior to or independent of his speech; however, in the phatic interjection he sidesteps this illusion of priority to actualize the presence of his body within his speech. When he sums up a list of examples with "You know the things" (90), the statement is a performative gesture that brings together himself and his narratee; Gerald Prince's description of the phatic refers to it as a "psycho-physiological connection" (71). The phatic gestures throughout Raoul's monologue create an atmosphere of appeal wherein his remorse and desire at once reach out to us and concretize us as presence in his narrative. Besides his many deictic comments constructing a context of "I" and "you" for his utterances, the phatic function is extended in more subtle ways: his overrepetition of the label "little fox-terrier" for himself, for one, becomes a gesture whereby we are encouraged to apply the term as a nickname or endearment to our hero rather than as a disparagement. (Henstra 2000: 143)

I finally get to the one long paragraph in this paper that treats the phatic function and we get is a mix-up with the metalingual function and a whole lot of nonsense that sounds deep but doesn't mean anything.

The phatic gesture raises interesting questions about the role of the reader in a performative text. As manifest in my discussion of the tendency toward critical condemnation of Matthew and Raoul, the way the performance is read determines at least in part what is actually performed. Certainly these texts call for a reevaluation of the pact between reader and author: a cooperative, rational progression toward shared objectives, taken on premise in ironic readings of Raoul and Matthew, must be supplanted here by conflictive, shifting and highly ambiguous interactions. (Henstra 2000: 143)

I'm gonna cherish this paper. I'm gonna mark it with "DNF" despite finishing it, because binary oppositions perform a duality of interpretive illiberality that manifests the symbolic gulf between discursive norms and the mobilized bodies of betrayed distress in instances of linguistic governmentability, and because I'm going to simulate the style of this paper when I get a chance to read a local Feminist book and write a literary critique of it, for money.

Lombardi, Olimpia; Sebastian Fortin and Leonardo Vanni 2015. A Pluralist View about Information. Philosophy of Science 82(5): 1248-1259.

As many recognize, information is a polysemantic concept that can be associated with different phenomena (Floridi 2010). In this conceptual tangle, the first distinction to be introduced is between a semantic and non-semantic view of information. According to the first view, information is something that carries semantic content (Bar-Hillel and Carnap 1953; Bar-Hillel 1964) and therefore is strongly related to semantic notions such as reference, meaning, and representation. In general, semantic information is carried by propositions that intend to represent states of affairs; hence, it has "aboutness," that is, it is directed to other things. And although it is still controversial whether false factual content may qualify as information, semantic information is strongly linked to the notion of truth. (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1248-1249)

Or, in Aristotelian terms, this first concept of information is apophantic. This is the type of information that phatic communion in most treatments of phaticity does not contain. Cf. non-referentiality, meaninglessness, and asemanticity.

Nonsemantic information, also called 'mathematical' or 'statistical', is concerned with the statistical properties of a given system and/or the correlations between the states of two systems, independently of the meanings of those states. The classical locus of mathematical information is the paper where Shannon (1948) introduces a precise formation designed to solve certain specific technological problems. Shannon's theory is purely quantitative; it ignores any issue related to informational content: "The semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages" (Shannon 1948, 379). (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1249)

This was already discussed somewhere above in relation with the French philosopher Michel Serres. It's does apply, though, since from the communication engineering point of view it really does not matter what people talk about. What matters is that they talk.

According to Shannon's theory (Shannon 1948), transmission of information requires a source S, a receiver R, and a channel CH. (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1249)

So that's how you abbreviate "channel". Details are good.

In recent years, it has been usual to hear in the philosophy of physics (not in the physics) community that the problem of the interpretation of information is dissolved because the word 'information' is an abstract noun. Timpson (2004, 2008) insists that what is produced at the source and what we desire to transmit is not a token sequence but a type sequence; however, types are abstract, and so they are not part of the spatiotemporal content of the world. Therefore, according to this view, information is not a substance, not even a physical entity, because it is not an entity at all: there is nothing the word 'information" refers to. (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1251)

So if "phatic" is an abstract adjective then it is not a substance and there is nothing in the world it refers to?

Epistemic and Physical Interpretations of Information. A concept usually connected with the notion of information is that of knowledge: information provides knowledge, modifies the state of knowledge of those who receive it. Some believe that the link between information and knowledge is a feature of the everyday notion of information, which must be carefully distinguished from Shannon's technical concept (Timpson 2004). (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1251)

This is brilliant. It is indeed a characteristic of phatic communion that it does not modify the state of your knowledge. It is epistemic inconsequentiality, this characteristic.

According to MacKay, information is linked to an increase in knowledge on the receiver's side: "Suppose we begin by asking ourselves what we mean by information. Roughly speaking, we say that we have gained information when we know something now that we didn't know before; when 'what we know' has changed" (1969, 10). (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1252)

There is no information in stating something perfectly obvious. MacKay, Donald 1969. Information, Mechanism and Meaning. The Hague: Mouton.

It is worth stressing that, from the epistemic perspective, the possibility of acquiring knowledge about a source by consulting the state of a receiver is rooted in the normic charactec of the regularities underlying the whole situation. In fact, the conditional probabilities that define the channel do not represent merely de facto correlations; they are determined by a network of lawful connections between the states of the source and the states of the receiver. (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1252)

In other words the channel has an epistemic component in the states of knowledge of the participants.

However, from an epistemic interpretation, nothing prevents us from admitting the existence of an informational link between the two receivers. In fact, we can define a communication channel between R_A and R_B because it is possible to learn something about R_B by looking at R_A and vice versa: "from a theoretical point of view [...] the communication channel may be thought of as simply the set of depending relations between [a system] S and [a system] R. If the statistical relations defining equivocation and noise between S and R are appropriate, then there is a channel between these two points, and information passes between them, even if there is no direct physical link joining S with R" (Dretske 1981, 38). The receiver R_B may even be farther from the source S than R_A, so that the events at R_B may occur later than those at R_A. Nevertheless, this is irrelevant from the epistemic view of information: although the events at R_B occur later, R_A carries information about what will happen at R_B. (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1254)

Morris. Communization. Sharing without signs.

Kosso (1989) also adheres to this tradition with his "interaction-information" account of scientific observation. (Lombardi, Fortin & Vanni 2015: 1254)

Kosso, Peter 1989. Observability and Observation in Physical Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Hess, Ursula and Agneta Fischer 2013. Emotional Mimicry as Social Regulation. Personality and Social Psychology Review 17(2): 142-157.

Emotions can be expressed in many ways. They may be displayed subtly or explicitly, through silence or screaming, through the raising of one eyebrow or by hitting a fist on the table, or simply by telling others how one feels. People react to these emotional signals with their own emotions, and these emotions may be either similar or different from the emotions in others that provoked these reactions. For example, people may react with contempt to a sentimental reaction such as crying, become frightened when confronted with an aggressive person, feel Schadenfreude when seeing an enemy in terror, or be envious when seeing someone proudly smile. On the other hand, people may also get tears in their eyes when seeing someone cry, afraid when seeing someone trembling with fear, or happy when seeing someone smile. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 142)

Or, to use E. R. Clay's terminology, there is homogeneous and heterogeneous sympathy.

Our overall aim is to present a contextualized view of emotional mimicry and to argue that emotional mimicry is dependent on the social context. To do this, we discuss the different functions that have been proposed for emotional mimicry on the basis of the available evidence and finish with an outline of an alternative model that emphasizes that (implicit or explicit) contextual information is needed for emotion mimicry to take place. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 142)

I am reading this at an opportune time, as the next chapter in Ogden and Richards I'll be reading is about the "sign-situation", i.e. a contextual theory of reference. It would be nice if I could amalgamate these two contextual theories in my own upcoming writings.

One of the central points is that mimicry serves to foster affiliation but also crucially depends on an initial affiliative stance, that is, an initial openness to engage with the other. Importantly, we define "contextualized" in its broadest sense, namely, the inclusion of social information. Context information can be explicit, for example, in references to the situation in which the expression occurs (e.g., funeral, or winning a context), but context information can also be implicit. For example, a smiling face provides not only information about the emotional state of the person, but the smile also signals affiliative intentions (Hess, Blairy, & Kleck, 2000) and the face provides information on the social group membership of the expresser (i.e., man or woman, a baby or an old man). (Hess & Fischer 2013: 143)

I've taken note of something like "an initial affiliative stance" in relation with first impressions somewhere among these readings. The role of smile in communicating willingness to communicate is also a topic in Carnegie 1936).

According to the standard view, behavioral mimicry is an automatic, matched motor response, based on a perception-behavior link (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; Preston & de Waal, 2003). We will refer to this idea as the Matched Motor Hypothesis, which assumes that merely perceiving a specific nonverbal display automatically entrains the same expression in the perceiver. The primary function of this imitative behavior is to foster affiliation and liking, because it smoothens the interaction and adjusts behavior by synchronizing the nonverbal behaviors of the interactants. Behavioral mimicry has therefore been referred to as "social glue" (Lakin, Jefferis, Cheng, & Chartrand, 2003). (Hess & Fischer 2013: 143)

There are two cardinally opposed metaphors at play in these sorts of invocations: social glue and social lubricant.

However, emotional mimicry and beavioral mimicry differ in a crucial way. Emotional expressions, in contrast with most other nonverbal behaviors, are intrinsically meaningful. Emotions are based on an appraisal of the emotion-eliciting event, which in turn is based on the expresser's preferences, values, and motivations (e.g., Scherer, 1987). People's naive emotion theories tend to be in line with these appraisals, that is, if people observe an emotion in others, they automatically try to infer why this person feels this emotion. Thus, naive emotion theories presume emotions to be elicited by the same classes of events that appraisal theories predict (Parkinson, 199, 2001; Roseman & Evdokas, 2004; Scherer, 1997; Smith & Ellsworth, 1985a, 1985b). (Hess & Fischer 2013: 143)

It sounds a bit like Jakobson's introversive semiosis, this intrinsic meaningfulness.

We considered 40 published studies that assessed emotional mimicry in at least one experimental group without additional manipulations such as emotion induction or manipulations that suppress mimicry (see Table 1). [...] The vast majority of these studies have focused on only two emotions - anger and happiness. Consequently, only limited evidence can be found for the mimicry of discrete emotions other than happiness and anger (see Table 1). The most common additional emotion is sadness, although disgust, fear, and surprise have also been studied (see Table 1). (Hess & Fischer 2013: 144)

This actually highlights some problems that our own meta-analysis of phatic studies might present. Namely, there are - as far as I know - no standardized measures for considering phaticity. If we were to create a table of phatic characteristics (common phaticisms, for example), the header would be very extensive. (Though this can probably be solved by rotating the table and making it a horizontal two-page ordeal.)

We now turn to studies in which the relational conetxt has been varied in some way or another. We begin by discussing various contextual influences to examine the first function of emotional mimicry - to promote affiliation. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 147)

"Relational context" and "promoting affiliation" are reasons for reading this paper among studies of phatics. The other two papers finishing this post are more like papers to emulate in formal structure when writing our meta-analysis of phatics.

A first factor relevant to emotional mimicry is one's positive or negative attitude toward the target. A negative attitude may inhibit emotional mimicry and increase the interpretation of emotional mimicry and increase the interpretation of emotional signals as hostile, even if it is a smile. For example, a political leader's emotional displays leads to less mimicry in observers with a different political orientation or a negative attitude toward this politician, compared with those who hold the same political opinion (Bourgeous & Hess, 2008; McHugo, Lanzetta, & Bush, 1991; McHugo, Lanzetta, Sullivan, Masters, & Englis, 1985). (Hess & Fischer 2013: 147)

Crucial aspects of the "opening" phase of interaction.

Third, similarity with the expresser may also foster mimicry. Specifically, individuals are more likely to mimic the emotional reactions of in-group members than those of out-group members. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 147)

In this sense the "breaking of silence" and establishing whether the newcomer speaks your language, for example, structures the consequent interaction on the nonverbal level.

Finally, the facial display itself tells the observer something about his or her potential relation with the expresser and, thus, provides implicit information about the intentions of the expresser. Specifically, some emotional expressions signal affiliation, whereas others do not. For example, when people do not have any other information, they spontaneously mimic a smile more than a frown. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 148)

It is easier to smile at a "neutral" person with whom you have not made contact. This demonstrates the disparity between Morris's and Ruesch's conceptions of communization.

In addition, a smile has a very low social cost. Whereas mimicking sadness, for example, signals understanding of the other person's suffering and, hence, may result in requests for aid and succor, smiles signal that all is well and that no immediate action is required. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 148)

This is a good point. Smiling is a very low form of empathy, it has more (casual) social value than (invested) personal value.

In fact, the smiling of a stranger might even signal that no animosity should be expected and that resources will be shared (e.g., a happy salesman may give you something for free). (Hess & Fischer 2013: 148)

In other words, smiling has a propitiative function (of reducing or alleviating interpersonal tension).

In contrast to smiles, facial movements that signal potential animosity, such as a frown, a tightened jaw, or pressed lips, do not imply an affiliative desire to share one's feelings but are more likely understood as a warning signal. An angry face thus signals a lack of affiliative intent (Hess et al., 2000; Knutson, 1996) and the imitation of an angry face in a social context is unlikely to facilitate affiliation. Thus, the imitation of anger, disgust, and probably contempt, is inherently incongruent with the notion that mimicry functions to facilitate affiliation. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 148)

In effect this amounts to an examination of "the context of situation" in relation with emotional mimicry.

That said, for human beings as a social species, affiliative intent can be assumed to be the default stance for situations in which the other is a potential in-group member and no information suggesting otherwise is provided by the context. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 148)

Phatic communion is in this sense the "default" state.

Moreover, there is evidence that observers "mimic" an emotional signal in another channel, for example, facial mimicry to emotional sounds [...] This finding suggests that hearing an emotional sonud entrains the simulation of a corresponding facial expression. [...] One might argue that such matched expressions do not represent mimicry, as there are no facial displays to be mimicked. From our point of view, however, emotional mimicry is not the result of exact copying of what one sees but rather the interpretation of an emotional signal. This interpretation is based on some minimal form of shared understanding, as conveyed by one or more emotional signals. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 151)

"All experience [...] is either enjoyed or interpreted [...] and very little of it escapes some degree of interpretation." (Ogden & Richards 1946[1923]: 50)

Becuse emotions are mentally represented as abstract concepts (amodal) and not as specific modalities (faces, gestures, feelings, etc.), activation of an emotional state need not be embodied in the same channel (Hawk et al., 2011; Houde et al., 2009). A facial expression in reaction to a vocal stimulus can thus be considered as a reenactment of the emotion in the same way as a facial expression to a facial stimulus. Thus, emotional mimicry can be considered a case of embodied simulation. Thus embodied simulation both elicits liking and rapport and seems to support emotional understanding as outlined above. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 151)

Ergo it's importance for phatic studies. These studies deal with face-to-face interaction, but now we need to take on the interpretation and understanding of emotions and their expressions in the context of computer mediated communication.

We have distinguished two types of reactions to a facial display: a mimicry response and a reactive response (Preston & de Waal, 2003). These two types of reactions often cannot be disentangled, especially not in an acontextual paradigm in which participants see an emotional face without any additional information the person or the cause of his or her emotion. We have argued that a mimicry response occurs only if there is potential affiliative intent between the observer and the target (indicated by the upper route in Figure 1). The basic assumption of a contextual model of mimicry is that people mimic a discrete emotion only if they share the perspective that gave rise to that specific emotion (see Figure 1). (Hess & Fischer 2013: 152)

At the end of the day this does really boil down to E. R. Clay's homogeneous sympathy (here, mimicry response), and heterogeneous sympathy (here, reactive response).

Various studies have demonstrated that spontaneous mimicry occurs only when a minimal form of affiliation or bonding exists between observer and target. This means that social interaction goals or inferred intentions should be minimally neutral, and preferably affiliative, for emotional mimicry to occur. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 152)

"Social interaction goals" are exactly what we're dealing with in phatic studies.

People do not need to think about not smiling at the smile of their enemy. They are simply not tempted to mimic such a smile because they do not see it as an invitation to play or enjoy together. (Hess & Fischer 2013: 152)

The pleasure/leisure principle. Communion depends on mutual enjoyment of each other's company.

Stephens, Nicole M.; Stephanie A. Fryberg and Hazel Rose Markus 2012. Social Class Disparities in Health and Education: Reducing Inequality by Applying a Sociocultural Self Model of Behavior. Psychological Review 119(4): 723-744.

We propose that one barrier to effectively addressing social class disparities in health and education is the unresolved clash between two models of human behavior - what we refer to as the individual model and the structural model. The term model of behavior refers to assumptions about the sources of human behavior that are rarely explicitly identified or acknowledged but that are foundational to research and to interventions. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 723)

Interesting stuff but how does it differ from the discussion and distinction of individualism and collectivism? Or personal and social? Or public and private?

The sociocultural self model recognizes that both individual characteristics and structural conditions are situated in larger contexts, which reflect particular ecological, economic, political, and historical circumstances. The term sociocultural context refers to these larger, macro-level forces that ground the dynamic interaction of structural conditions and individual characteristics. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 725)

It sounds a bit like these sociocultural contexts are the transactional "Third" class of systems.

By answering these questions, the sociocultural self model has the potential to bridge the gap between traditional explanations of inequality and, in doing so, to generate more integrative research efforts and effective interventions. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 725)

Phrasing. This is also our goal in formulating phatic studies and doing our best to integrate the various points of access to phatics.

Second, the individual model of behavior does not fully recognize the socioculturally shaped selves that guide how people make sense of their experiences and, in turn, how these understandings shape peopl's behavior. For example, in low SES environments that offer fewer opportunities for choice, control, or influence, people develop understandings of behavior that focus less on influencing the situation, enacting personal control, and having independence and instead focus more on adjusting to their environment and connecting with and responding to others (e.g., Stephen, Hamedani, Markus, Bergsieker, & Eloul, 2009). (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 730)

Huh. It's interesting that the characteristics of low SES (socio-economic status) are closely aligned with the conceptual plane of phatic communion.

One area of research suggests that social class disparities in health are a product of differential access to the services, facilities, and safe living canditions that are known to foster healthy behavior (e.g., healthy diet, increased physical activity). For example, people in low SES neighborhoods have less access to parks, walking and biking trails, playgrounds, and safe spaces for recreation (Estabrooks, Lee, & Gyurcsik, 2003; Macintyre, Maciver, & Sooman, 1993). (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 731)

These facilities are also conductive to phatic communion, co-operation, and leisure, i.e. places where social communion takes place.

We suggest that MTO may have been ineffective, in part, because it did not fully recognize the two important tenets that are central to the sociocultural self model of behavior: the principle of mutual constitution and attention to selves as a systematic source of the culture-specific meanings that guide behavior. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 732)

What does that even mean?

Second, MTO did not attend to the role of the socioculturally shaped selves that guide behavior by shaping how individuals make sense of their environments. The sociocultural self model considers that people's socioculturally shaped selves inform how people make sense of the situation (e.g., what it means to move to a "better" neighborhood; DeLuca, 2007; DeLuca & Rosenblatt, 2010). These understandings (e.g., whether people identify with the new neighborhood), in turn, guide how people respond to the opportunities that the new neighborhood presents (Schooler, 2007; Sewell, 1992). For example, even after moving to a new neighborhood with access to higher quality schools, individuals may not see themselves as "learners" or "students." Without these types of school-relevant selves, they may harbor low expectations for their educational attainment or have concerns about how teachers will view them, and as a result, they may not fully take advantage will view them, and as a result, they may not fully take advantage of the opportunities that are available to them. The nature and content of people's selves - whether individuals identify as "students" and understand school as something for "people like me" - will, in turn, influence whether or not a given strategy for improving academic performance will be effective. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 732)

This sounds like a reduction on another level: that people's "sociocultural selves" are primarily goal-oriented (self-efficacy and whatnot) self-descriptions. It certainly looks like in all this talk of "systemic" "sociocultural" "selves" there's a lot that's left out. I'm only halfway through this paper so it may still come through. But I'd like to see it address, for example, the meeting point between self-description (sociocultural selves), and the structural conditions that provide conceptual resources for such description. For example, someone reddit pointed out that so many low SES Mexicans go over to the US because the image of "Mexican immigrant", the illegal low-wage work they should be provided, etc. are all already in place.

In one direction, illustrating this process of mutual constitution, lower social class contexts with fewer material resources and greater constraints may foster higher individual levels of social responsiveness and attention to others than higher social class contexts (see Krauss, Piff, & Keltner, 2011; Stephens, Fryberg, & Markus 2011). (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 734)

Again we are reminded that poor people have a stronger sense of community (perhaps even because they don't have much else).

The sociocultural self model is grounded in classic social psychological principles, but also builds on and extends these principles (cf. Adams, 2012; Markus & Hamedani, 2007). As elaborated in Ross and Nisbett's (1991) book, The Person and the Situation, the first social psychological principle, termed "the power of the situation," refers to the idea that subtle situational factors can have a powerful influence on psychological experience and behavior. Extending this principle, the sociocultural self model views the situation with a wide-angle lens and recognizes that "the situation" is more than just the immediate situation. That is, the sociocultural self model conceptualizes the situation as embedded in the larger sociocultural contexts in which individuals participate, such as those demarcated by social class, race/ethnicity, gender, religion, nation, and region of origin. The model gurther recognizes that these socially and historically reconstructed sociocultural contexts contain sets of culture-specific ideas, practices, and institutions that shape the selves that emerge in particular situations and, in turn, how people make sense of and respond to those situations. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 734)

Participate or transact? I get the "social situation", but I can't help seeing similarities with the kind of "Lefty" political talk that attributes all social ills to "systemic" problems.

Extending this principle, the sociocultural self model reveals that the meaning of a situation is not just a function of individuals who choose to interpret situations in their own idiosyncratic ways. Rather, the meaning of a situation and how it is interpreted vary systematically according to people's socioculturally shaped selves. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 734)

And there we have it. "Systemic," mutters Jon Stewart, "I love that word, systemic."

In the following section, we describe emblematic examples from the literature on (a) social identity threat, (b) identity-based motivation, and (c) cultural models of self and agency. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 734)

So this is about "identity politics"?

For the last two decades, an emerging area of research in cultural psychology has illuminated the sociocultural diversity of human behavior and psychological functioning (see Markus & Kitayama, 2010). The central premise of this research is that individuals' psychological functioning - how people think, feel, and act in the world - is a sociocultural product. As Markus and Kitayama (2003) explained, "Being a person and acting in the world are anything but natural acts; they are culturally saturated processes that entail engagement with culture-specific sets of meanings and practices" (p. 6). That is, contexts with different sets of ideas, practices, and institutions provide people with particular cultural models or sets of widely shared understandings of how to be an appropriate person in the world (Cross & Madson, 1997; Markus & Kitayama, 2003, 2010). These cultural models of self and agency guide individuals' behavior and serve as a blueprint for how people understand their own and others' behavior (Firske et al., 1998; Holland & Quinn, 1987; Shore, 1996). (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 735)

It certainly sounds good. Very general, perhaps, but in line with cultural relativism that negates anything universal in the human experience (physiology is not a thing; you don't really believe in genes, do you?).

Participants were randomly assigned to read one of two welcome messages from their university. The independent message framed the university culture and college experience as about exploring personal interests, working independently, and paving one's own pathways. In contrast, the interdependent message framed the university culture and college experience as about being part of a community, working collaboratively, and connecting with others. As expected, when the college culture was framed in terms of independence (a cultural mismatch with working-class students' motives), students from working-class background experienced the performance task as more difficult than did students from middle-class backgrounds, and this construal of the task undermined working-class students' performance. Yet, when the college culture was framed in terms of interdependence (a cultural match with working-class students' motives0, working-class students experienced the performance task as less difficult, and the social class performance gap between working-class and middle-class students was eliminated (Shephens, Fryberg, Markus, Johnson, & Covarrubias, 2012). (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 736)

I resent the implication that phatic communion is a "poor" thing, much like I detest the Russian author's explicit statement that "Female communication is phatic."

Above and beyond individual characteristics or access to material resources, the sociocultural self model extends traditional approaches by focusing on the self as a product of the mutual constitution of individuals and structures in particular sociocultural contexts over time. (Stephens, Fryberg & Markus 2012: 739)

In essence, systems and elements within those systems are mutually constitutive. Brilliant.

Carter, Dorothy R.; Leslie A. DeChurch, Michael T. Braun and Noshir S. Contractor 2015. Social Network Approaches to Leadership: An Integrative Conceptual Review. Journal of Applied Psychology 100(3): 597-622.

Social network approaches provide a set of theories and methods with which to articulate and investigate, with greater precision and rigor, the wide variety of relational perspectives implied by contemporary leadership theories. Our goal is to advance this domain through an integrative conceptual review. (Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 597)

I'm very interested in what social network approaches actually are, for sake of my own meta-theoretical network approach. The end-goal is similarly an integrative conceptual review of phatic studies.

Although these core questions have changed little over the past century, a noticeable trend in recent research is the growing appreciation of the relational nature of leadership. Leadership is conceptualized as a "dyadic, shared, relational, strategic, global, and a complex social dynamic" (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009, p. 423). (Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 597)

The situation is largely the same in phatic studies. Especially the change over the past century, which has emphasized relationality only during the past 40 years or so.

Social networks are the patterns of interpersonal relationships (i.e., ties) among a set of people (i.e., actors, nodes; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Social network approaches offer theoretical rationale for understanding the development and utility of relationships, as well as a set of analytic tools designed to identify, describe, and explain relationships (e.g. Borgatti, Mehra, Brass, & Labianca, 2009; Contractor, Wasserman, & Faust, 2006). Thus, network approaches are well suited for investigating leadership as a relational phenomenon. The goal of our review is to advance this domain through an integrative conceptual review of social network approaches to leadership. We organize this prior research to facilitate understanding and integration across subdomains of this work, opening up fruitful new avenues for leadership inquiry. (Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 598)

The similarities continue. Integration across subdomains is especially prevalent, as phaticity is approached differently in various disciplines, and if integration be conducted the idiosyncracies of each must be considered.

Contemporary definitions have also advanced a view of leadership as situated in specific contexts, as a patterned phenomenon, and as a process that can be formal and/or informal. (Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 598)

Again, spot on. Phatic communion was conceptualized with the context of situation in mind in the first place, and Firth added the element of patterning (reconceptualizing phaticity as a system of signs), and formal vs informal problematic comes to the foreground when considering leisure (original orientation) and service encounters (since the 1990s).

Table 1. Exemplar Definitions of Leadership That Emphasize Its Relational, Situated, Patterned, and Formal/Informal Nature

(Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 599)

This is the straw that broke the camel's back. This Table is why I decided that I need to read this paper. For our own meta-analysis we need to construct a similar table, demonstrating the various definitions of phatic communion, phatic function, and phatic communication. I won't re-type the whole Table (I'll screencap instead), but I'll note that this is a technique worth emulation. The only problem is, since we're dealing with several interrelated concepts or even subdivisions of characteristics, we might have to construct several such tables.

In summary, social network approaches provide a theoretical apparatus with which to articulate and investigate, with greater precision and rigor, the wide variety of relational perspectives implied by contemporary theories of leadership. (Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 600)

Something for the prolegomena ("Phatics, phaticity, and phatic studies"), where the variety of perspectives is surveyed and useful conceptions towards a theoretical apparatus are formalized.

We began our review by identifying all studies published within the past 15 years (1999-2014) in top-tier journals specializing in topics related to leadership, human resource management, organizational psychology, organizational behavior, sociology, social networks, and communication that included the terms leadership and networks as keywords and/or used network analytic techniques to study leadership. Next, we identified publications not explicitly using these search terms that fell within the scope of our review. These include leadership studies within management and applied psychology that may not mention networks but whose conceptual assumptions relied heavily on patterns of social processes (e.g., Aime, Humphrey, DeRue, & Paul, 2014). (Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 600)

Yup. That's my method as well. Though since "phatic" is such a restricted or rare concept, it's possible to survey more material (after this series I've planned 80 papers from 1920s to 1990s).

We turn now to the findings. Within each area, we present a brief synopsis of the dominant theoretical ideas. Then, we synthesize recent exemplar quantitative, qualitative, and case-based studies with regard to (a) network relations and metrics utilized, (b) conceptual orientations, (c) key findings, and (d) research design and sample type. (Carter, DeChurch, Braun & Contractor 2015: 603)

Okay. This is getting intense. There are very few quantitative studies in phaticity (still, there are a few), but qualitative and case-based studies are plenty. In our case we need to consider (a) the pertinent phatic (communion, communication, or function - in chronological order); (b) conceptual orientation (yes!), (c) findings (which may be boring), and ... I'm not really sure what to do with "research design and sample syze". We've yet to say anything about methodology - it's a white spot on our map.

See also:

• Meta-phatics (1) = Ameka 1992; Bazzanella 1990; Bullis & Bach 1991; Ephratt 2008; Faerch & Kasper 1982; Kita & Ide 2007; McCarthy 2003; Placencia 2004; Placencia 2005; and Schlieben-Lange 1977.
• Meta-phatics (2) = Holba 2008; Cruz 2013; Varis & Blommaert 2015; Frosh 2011; Miller 2015; Nozawa 2015; Ward & Horn 1999; Žegarac & Clark 1999b; Coupland 2003; and Peace 2013.
• Meta-phatics (3) = Rank 1984; Cruz 2005; Faucher 2013; Lomborg 2012; Slotta 2015; Radovanovic & Ragnedda 2012; Whiteley 1966; Kunreuther 2006; Hopkins 2014; and Alonso 2002.
• Meta-phatics (4) = Bagheri, Ibrahim & Habil 2012; Stenström 2014; Tudini 2013; Ho 2014; Obana 2012; Isurin, Furman & White 2015; Drazdauskienė 2012; Feenberg 1989; al-Qinai 2011; and Burnard 2003.