Laver, John 1975. Communicative functions of phatic communion. In: Kendon, Adam; Richard M. Harris and Mary Ritchie Key (eds.), Organization of Behavior in Face-to-face Interaction. The Hague: Mouton, 215-238.
When Malinowski invented the term [phatic communion], he crystallized a conceptual area that had been previously amorphous, and the analysis of the different functions of language took a step further forward. (Laver 1975: 215)I am not so sure he crystallized it because the conceptual area of phatics seems amorphous almost a century later still.
However, as often happens when a label and a definition are first supplied for a new conceptual area, the very act of identification has seemed to inhibit further enquiry. (Laver 1975: 215)I would argue against this. Further enquiry was forthcoming, but it took Roman Jakobson to popularize it amongst linguists. That is, several decades passed before "phatic" overcame its status as an anthropological oddity (until the 1950s, anthropologists often merely remarked that "phatic" is a thing Malinowski coined) and captured the minds of communication theorists.
Malinowski's view on the function of phatic communion has been echoed by almost all writers who have touched on the subject since 1923. A typical formulation is that of Lyons, who says that phatic communion "serves to establish and maintain a feeling of social solidarity and well-being" (Lyons 1968: 417). (Laver 1975: 215)Again, not so. Jakobson took over the term but gave it a much more technical definition in which social solidarity and well-being is almost not even a factor. Instead, he emphasizes the formulaic greeting aspect, which may in fact be taken as a misinterpretation of Malinowski (to be fair, Malinowski's original appendix is pretty fuzzy on the details of phatic communion). That is, Laver seems to neglect Jakobson's contribution or doesn't quite understand the difference between his phatic function and Malinowski's phatic communion.
The point of departure for this article is the notion that phatic communion is not a simple phenomenon, and that its function of creating ties of union, if that is indeed its principal function, is achieved by subtle and intricate means whose complexity does not deserve to be minimized by the use of such phrases as "a mere exchange of words." (Laver 1975: 216)This is a long-ass way to say that phatic communion is not purely verbal.
The specific questions addressed by the research reported here are: What are the actual phenomena of phatic communion? When do these phenomena occur within the span of a given interaction, and in what type of interaction? With what other types of behavioral phenomena is phatic communion associated? What are the social functions of phatic communion, and finally, what is the functional significance of a speaker's choice of indulging in one type of phatic communion rather than another? (Laver 1975: 216)In other words: (1) What kinds of phemes are there? (2) What behaviours is phasis related with? (3) What does phasis actually achieve and why do people engage in it?
Phatic communion of course has a literal meaning of "communion achieved through speech." A pervasice attitude in recent research into face-to-face interaction has been that speech is only one among the many strands of communication, and that the communicative function of any one strand is better understood in the context of the operation of the other strands than in isolation. (Laver 1975: 216)Again, a long-ass way to say that phasis also involves nonverbal communication.
The position I would like to reach at the end of the article is that the fundamental social function of the multistranded communicative behavior that accompanies and includes phatic communion is the detailed management of interpersonal relationships during the psychologically crucial margins of interaction. (Laver 1975: 217)This is where it gets interesting and presents a possibility of conjunction with Bateson's "communication about relationship". That is, the phasis is involved not only in the management of the channel, the whole of the interaction, but indeed the management of the interpersonal relationship (or even a network of relationships). The "psychologically crucial margins of interaction" seems promising but more exposition is needed.
It is convenient to divide the temporal structure of interactions into three major phases, the opening phase, the medial phase, and the closing phase. As a preliminary comment, we might say that the function of the behavioral activity that characterizes the opening phase is to lubricate the transition from noninteraction to interaction, and to ease the potentially awkward tension of the early moments of the encounter, "breaking the ice," so to speak, before the main business of the encounter is embarked upon in the medial phase. The closing phase is once again a transitional phase, easing the transition from full interaction to departure.Going by the temporal structure is what Jakobson does, and I've suspected that he does that because Bateson's original classification of metacommunicative signals follows this structure. But that's that. What irks me here is the "narrow sense" as opposed to a "wider sense" that we're not presented with. I don't think phatic communion in the narrow sense is the "degree zero" of verbal communication, the simple fact of verbal communication itself. Rather, the "narrow sense" should be exactly the position Laver himself takes - that it has to do with the temperal structure and lubrication of communication. This is the Jakobsonian view of it, i.e. channel maintenance. This is rather narrow as compared to the broader sense of communization that Charles Morris, Jurgen Ruesch as well as Julia Elyachar give us - that phatic communion has to do with sharing: be it sharing a feeling of oneness or unity, sharing of common experience and finding common ground, or sharing social contacts and infrastructure. That is, in my view, the "narrow sense" focuses on the formulaic/stereotypical aspects of (mostly verbal) communication, while the "wider sense" places emphases on the "communion" aspect of sharing, sociability, gregariousness, welcoming and friendly atmosphere, etc. In other words, one is more "phatic" and the other is more "communion".
Stricly, all three phases are normally characterized by phatic communion in the narrow sense of involving the participants interacting through speech. But phatic communion as normally understood, applying to choices from a limited set of stereotyped phrases of greeting, parting, commonplace remarks about the weather, and small talk, strongly characterizes the marginal phase of interaction only, and it is these marginal phases that will be the focus of attention here. (Laver 1975: 218)
Nevertheless there are some situations in our culture where we normally avoid phatic communion during the opening phase as being inappropriate to that particular type of situation. An obivous case is where the interactants have already met that day, or at least within the last six or sever hours, and have already indulged in extended phatic communion in their first meeting. Another case is where the roles of the interactants are already very clearly defined, as in situations such as a university lecture, buying a railway ticket, or talking to a telephone operator. In all these situations, the role structure of the encounter is known to the interactants in advance. (Laver 1975: 218)There is a very big and important implication or assumption in this that must be spelled out. The best I can do is apply the enigmatic/paradigmatic distinction offered by Harré and Secord in The Explanation of Social Behaviour (1976):
Most episodes cannot be clearly classified: they are enigmatic, having neither an explicit set of rules, nor produced by well-established causal mechanisms. Enigmatic episodes are explained by applying to them concepts used in the explanation of those paradigmatic episodes which themselves have clear explanations, be they formal or causal. The structure of episodes has two levels: overt and covert. The former consists of the act-action sequence, contained in the episode; the latter, of the permanent and transitory powers and states of readiness and the flux of emotions that underlie the episode. (Harré & Secord 1976: 12)Basically, Laver presumes that phatic communion is most necessary in enigmatic episodes, i.e. interactions where there are no explicit set of rules, nor well-established causal mechanism bringing it about. That is, in informal settings phatic communion is necessary by way of achieving a consensual view of what's happening. In formal settings, such as a university lecture, buying a railway ticket, or talking to a telephone operator, the roles and rules of the interaction are known beforehand (they are "paradigmatic") and so phatic communion is overtly unnecessary (you don't have to make small talk and define the situation with the university lecturer, ticket salesperson and telephone operator - tacit knowledge dictates the formulaic nature of these interactions). This is an important point because here the intercultural differences in phatic communion become most apparent. There are societies in which phatic communion is actually necessary in order to achieve aims that in other societies are pre-ordained. Elyachar's empirical example of Egyptian women wanting to get their plumbing done is a superb example. The distinction makes sense in other areas as well: traffic lights in Western world are "paradigmatic" in this sense - they do control the traffic in a rule-based way that leaves relationships with other drivers on the road un-enigmatic; In South-Africa, for example, as Trevor Noah reports, there are traffic lights but they are mostly useless gadgets imported for the mere sake of having them - actual road traffic is much more phatic: you have to keep an eye on other drivers and make sense of the situation yourself (whether it's time to cross or turn is not controlled so much by the traffic light but by the working consensus between the drivers themselves). This, again, is "phatic" in a broader sense than here intended - it involves channels and forms of contact much more complex and subtle than verbal communication and formulaic greetings.
The conclusion this leads to is that when the interactants DO indulge in phatic communion, they do not already know the precise details of the roles they are about to play in the oncoming interaction, and that the process of phatic communion allows them the opportunity to explore, in a tentative way, the social identity and momentary state of mind of the other participant, in order to be able to define and construct an appropriate role for themselves in the rest of the interaction. In other words, I am suggesting that an important function of phatic communion is to help the participants to reach what Goffman (1959) has called the "working consensus" of the interaction, about some aspects of their respective roles in those situations where the role structure is not previously obvious to the participants. (Laver 1975: 218-219)This is exactly what I meant. It's the same stuff phrased in different terms. What I would add to exploring the other's identity is Ruesch's version of communization, i.e. exploring each other's common experience, so as to "establish a common, though incomplete, frame of reference under which premises interaction can proceed" (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327).
The first stage in any encounter, as many writers have pointed out, is for the participants to make mutual eye contact. We recognize the necessity of eye contact as the first stage, in ordinary language about encounters, when we speak of "trying to catch someone's eye" before being prepared to start talking - in a restaurant situation with a waiter, for example. To accept eye contact is the first signal of acknowledgement that one accepts the other participant's invitation to ingage in an encounter. (Laver 1975: 219)Recall Jakobson's illustration from a short story by Dorothy Parker in which newlyweds sit down in a train and engage in a back-and-forth exchange of formalities in the style of "well, here we are" that conveniently left out the opening sequence of the newlyweds making eye contact before beginning the sequence of formulaic utterances.
Before coming on to the detailed analysis of the linguistic tokens used in phatic communion, I would like to offer some brief preliminary comments on posited functions of the use of phatic communion in the opening phase. Firstly, it would seem to have an important propitiatory function in defusing the potential hostility of silence in situations where speech is conventionally anticipated. [...] Hayakawa (1952: 70) says something similar "... it is possible to state, as a general principle, that the prevention of silence is itself an important function of speech, and that it is completely impossible for us is society to talk only when we 'have something to say'." (Laver 1975: 220)Just like I had assumed, the propitiatory function is directly inspired by Malinowski's remark about "the breaking of silence" and "the strange and unpleasant tension which men feel when facing each other is silence". Here I would once again affirm that there are noticeable intercultural differences in this regard. An American psychologist has remarked about my culture: "Estonians are comfortable with silence. I have spent many hours in cafés and parks, watching people. I have often seen two people eat a meal together or walk together and barely speak. They are neither depressed nor angry. They simply have no need to fill empty space with words." This is an example. From my early readings in anthropology that I can't cite I know that there are/were Native American groups with similar attitude towards silence but even more pronounced: when meeting another person in the plains they would sit or lay down on the ground and be silent together until they felt comfortable with each other's presence.
Secondly, as suggested earlier, phatic communion has an exploratory function, in that it allows the participants to feel their way towards the working consensus of their interaction. Their perception of such factors as their relative social status can be controlled by aspects of their linguistic behavior during phatic communion, and this will be discussed in more detail below; but the phonetic behavior of the participants is important also. When a person speaks, he reveals often very detailed indexical information about his personal characteristics of regional origin, social status, personality, age, sex, state of health, mood, and a good deal more. (Laver 1975: 220-221)Once again, I like Ruesch's communization more because it goes a step further: of course you glean information about the other person from his or her appearance, mannerisms, speech accent, etc. but also just by engaging in small talk and exploring what that person's life experience is like, what s/he is interested in, etc. you also engage in what some (like Kenneth Burke) call "identification" or (like George Herbert Mead) "participation in the other" (see here). You establish rapport more easily with people you have something in common with, be it language, culture, hometown, going through military service or war, etc. Laver actually seems to understand this point:
Between participants who are already acquainted, the exploratory function mentioned here serves to reconfirm previous information, and between strangers serves as an initial identification. (Laver 1975: 221)Even the word is the same, although "identification" has several meanings and I'm not exactly sure in which sense Laver means it.
Many writers have maintained that not only are the linguistic tokens selected from a finite, small set of possible utterances, but also that the referential content of the particular utterance is irrelevant to the nature of the interaction. Abercombie (1956: 3), for example, writes that: "The actual sense of the words used in phatic communion matters little," and goes on to recount the story of Dorothy Parker,My first thought was that those phaticists sure do love Dorothy Parker but the date behind Abercrombie's reference makes me suspicious of Jakobson who could have "aped" David Abercrombie's 1956. Problems and Principles (London: Longmans.). In fact, from a review of the book it appears that Abercrombie had quite a lot in common with Jakobson, especially when it comes to language functions.alone and rather bored at a party [who was] asked "How are you? What have you been doing?" by a succesion of distant acquaintances. To each she replied "I've just killed my husband with an axe, and I feel fine." Her intonation and expression were appropriate to party small-talk, and with a smile and a nod each acquaintance, unastonished, drifted on.(Laver 1975: 221)
Nonetheless [contra the argument that, as Malinowski says, words used in phatic communion fulfill a social function instead of conveying meaning], I would wish to take the position that the semantic meaning of the tokens selected in phatic communion is indeed relevant to the nature of the interaction, firstly by constraining the semantic theme within which the participants must make their choices of tokens in a particular occasion of phatic communion, and secondly, and more importantly, by providing the participants with a subtle means of communicating to each other their views about such indexical aspects of their momentary relationship as their relative social status. (Laver 1975: 222)Here Laver gets at the relevant point that phatic utterances are not completely "asemantic". Although their meaning may appear irrelevant they do structure the nature of the interaction and convey something about the relationship between the participants. Thus, it is doubly metacommunicative in the sense that it communicates both about the code (what speech register will be used) as well as about the relationship (how our social statuses will organize the interaction).
Thus part of any individual's expertise in the (often quite extended) interchanges of phatic communion is his ability to sustain a particular semantic theme, once one of the participants has embarked upon that theme. So the semantic sense of the linguistic tokens is not entirely irrelevant, in at least this limited aspect. (Laver 1975: 222)I recall (I cannot remember from where, probably somewhere on the internet at large or reddit in particular) a U.S. translator in the Iraq war recounting his experience, after the war, of communicating with someone in his company, speaking over the telephone, noticing arabic accent and exchanging a profusion of arabic phatic utterances (i.e. the ones that praise Allah) which ultimately led him to get a job promotion because the arabic man he was talking with turned out to be a higher up, someone from the management.
Fourth, merely by speaking, and implicitly inviting the listener to participate in a linguistic interaction with him, the speaker asserts a claim to sociolinguistic solidarity with the listener. If the listener accepts the invitation to a spoken interaction, then by implication he gives the speaker a safe-conduct to enter his territory without making him suffer a counterdisplay of hostility. A suggestive analogue here would be the military control of territory, where passwords and countersigns are overt signals of mutual solidarity. (Laver 1975: 226)Sociolinguistic solidarity is a term I could operate with. Still, it covers a broader area than, for example, the nefarious "language band" that I still haven't found the source for. That is, when you are speaking with another person you constitute a communication system bound by a tie that cannot be easily broken without offense. When someone is speaking with you you can't just disengage without the proper phatic utterances. There's a "language band" holding you together, like a wedge that stretches but doesn't break. (It stretches here in the sense that you can turn your body towards the exit and visibly demonstrate that you're about to leave, but the fact that the other person is speaking stops you from going through with it and just leaving.)
If one function of phatic communion in the parting phase is to contribute to a continuing consensus which can stand as a tentative pre-structuring of the relationship experienced in the current interaction. (Laver 1975: 227)This sounds a bit like Bateson's "communication about relationship" but restricted to the closing phase of the interaction, which was only part of Bateson's point. This should be kept in mind when returning to Bateson.
The second type of consolidatory token makes explicit reference to the continuation of the relationship, as in phases like "See you next week," "Let's not leave it so long this time," "Be seeing you," "Let's meet again soon," "See you at the match on Saturday," and many similar phrases. It is interesting that the formulaic phrases of farewell in English, unlike those in many other European languages, contain no such promise of continuation of the relationship. The French au revoir, German auf Wiedersehen, Italian arrivederci and Spanish hasta la vista all literally anticipate a repeated encounter, but the English "good bye" contains no such implication. One has to go to less formulaic idioms in English to find the equivalent promise of continuation, such as "See you," and "Be seeing you." (Laver 1975: 230-231)In Estonian, similarly, there is the archaic phrase jällenägemiseni ("Until we see again!") which has been shortened to simply nägemiseni ("See you!"). It irks Estonian language teachers (and myself as well) when this phrase is shortened even more and becomes nägemist, which now carries the impliciation of "See ya!" but literally means "see" in the sense of "have good visions".
It may have become clear from the discussion above of phatic communion and associated behavior in the two margins of interaction that two broad functions are being served. One is the establishment and consolidation of the interpersonal relationship between the two participants. The other is the comfortable management of the transition from noninteraction to full interaction, and the transition from interaction to noninteraction. General conclusions about the purpose of phatic communion can be focused on these two areas separately. (Laver 1975: 232)This distinction is curiously strong. One is closer to Bateson's μ-function and the other is closer to Jakobson's phatic function.
The most important thing to be said about the establishment and consolidation of the interpersonal relationship between the two participants is that it is achieved by the speaker, and the conclusions being drawn by the listener, are all concerned with the communication of the identity and attributes of the interaction, and with their psychosocial relationship. (Laver 1975: 232)This is where I see phatic communion in its relation with autocommunication. This is based on the assumption that identity comes about partly through autocommunicative processes (i.e. self-description, self-characterization, self-evaluation, self-interpretation, etc.), and the somewhat fuzzy idea that one's relationship to oneself is related to one's relationships to others. As to "psychosocial relationship", I think this should really be the proper object of phatics. The most operative term being not identity but relation.
As an overall comment, where the principal function of the opening phase seems to be the attempt to reach a working consensus for the remainder of the interaction, the chief function of the closing phase seems to be to announce a continuing provisional consensus for future interactions. If this is a valid comment, then it makes phatic communion and associated behavior a most important social and psychological instrument, in that the cumulative consensus about a relationship reached as the result of repeated encounters between the two participants constitutes the essence of that relationship. Skill in managing the behavioral resources of phatic communion thus becomes not the triviality dismissively referred to as small talk, but a very basic skill essential to a major part of the psychosocial transactions that make up daily life. (Laver 1975: 232-233)Here Laver affirms the grander importance of phatics. This topic becomes much more pronounced when we reach modern society and social media: understanding the essence of relationship as cumulative consensus about it becomes very interesting when cumulative consensus takes the form of clicks on like, follow, share, etc. buttons and short (chat) messages.
In some aspects of the behavior characteristic of the marginal phases, there is a sense in which the two phases look in different directions, so to speak. To some degree, the opening phase looks inwards to the oncoming interaction, while the closing phase looks outwards, as it were, to the resumption of social life outside the momentary relationship of the encounter. (Laver 1975: 233)If you're dealing with the temporal structure of the interaction then yes.
Firth's "adaptive value" could benefit the concept of "phatic labor". Source: Firth, R. 1972. Verbal and bodily rituals of greeting and parting. In: La Fontaine, J. S. (ed.), The interpretation of ritual. London: Travistock Publications, 1-38. (Google Books)In a broad sense greeting and parting behaviour may be termed RITUAL since it follows PATTERNED ROUTINES; it is a system of SIGNS that convey other than overt messages; ... and it has ADAPTIVE VALUE in facilitating social relations (Firth 1972: 29-30).In the terms of this article, the "signs" involve both linguistic and non-linguistic acts, and the "other than overt" messages carried by the signs are the indexical messages which manage and control the interpersonal relationship between the participants. (Laver 1975: 234-235)
Review
John Laver's "Communicative functions of phatic communion" (1975) was published in an early and influential collection of articles dealing with nonverbal communication, Organization of Behavior in Face-to-face Interaction, edited by then current experts of the field (most notably, Adam Kendon was a linguist who pioneered gesture studies, and Mary R. Key was a linguist who did much to popularize nonverbal communication as a field). This might explain the tremendous influence Laver's paper has had (Google Scholar lists 297 citations to it).
Laver's approach to phatic communion is thus primed by emphasis on the nonverbal aspects, or what he calls "All the different communicative strands" and successively lists "speech, gesture, body movements, orientation, proximity, eye contact and facial expressions" (Laver 1975: 216-217). At various points throughout the paper he goes to say that "phatic communion is not a simple phenomenon" and that if it's function is to create ties of union then this "is achieved by subtle and intricate means whose complexity does not deserve to be minimized" to what Malinowski describes as "a mere exchange of words" (Laver 1975: 216).
His emphasis on subtlety, complexity and intricacy in this regard is best illustrated by his avoidance of Roman Jakobson's phatic function. Instead, he prefers to agree with linguists and semanticists who place emphasis on the feeling of social solidarity and well-being (John Lyons) and disagree with those who argue that the actual sense of the words used in phatic communion matters little (David Abercrombie) (cf. Laver 1975: 215; 221). These agreements and disagreements underlie his interpretation of the phenomenon of phatic communion.
This is nowhere more prevalent than in the bulk of his analysis which, despite being explicitly oriented towards nonverbal aspects, deals more heavily and thoroughly with the variety of social functions carried out phatic communion in the temporal structure of the interaction, and with the wealth of meaning actually present in those phatic utterances which some view as lacking or at least having an irrelevant meaning. In his view, these utterances do have a meaningful role to play in the interaction.
Based on these assumptions, in the concluding section of the paper he differentiates two broad functions that phatic communion serves: "One is the establishment and consolidation of the interpersonal relationship between the two participants" and "The other is the comfortable management of the transition from noninteraction to full interaction, and the transition from interaction to noninteraction" (Laver 1975: 232).
Instead of Roman Jakobson's interpretation, which certainly has a lot to do with the "channel management" aspect (i.e. the transition between interaction and non-interaction), or even Gregory Bateson's μ-function which has to do with establishing and consolidating interpersonal relationships, Laver turns to Goffman and the aspect of "working consensus" in the latter's The presentation of self in everyday life (1959), which involves maintaining "a reciprocal show of affection, respect, and concern for the the other" (Goffman 1959: 4).
It is especially characteristic of his whole endeavor to pay attention to the types of consolidation that phatic communion manifests. Tentatively following Charles Peirce's distinction between icon, index, and symbol he differentiates different types of phatic communion tokens (Laver 1975: 230-231):
- Consolidatory tokens that comment on the quality of the current encounter, now drawing to a close, such as" It was nice seeing you," "I do enjoy our little chats," and "Talking with you always cheers me up."
- Consolidatory tokens that make explicit reference to the continuation of the relationship, such as "See you next week," "Let's meet again soon," and "See you at the match on Saturday."
- Consolidatory tokens that remind the listener that he is bound in a web of social solidarity with the speaker by the ties of common acquaintance, such as "Remember me to Tom," "Say hello to Jeanie for me," and "Tell Jeanie I was asking after her."
Laver takes this connection very seriously, even when dealing with the emotionally neutral tokens about weather and differentiates past reference like "Terrible night last night," present reference like "Nice day today," and future reference like "Snow's coming," (Laver 1975: 223). It is worthwhile to make the Peircean semio-temporal aspect here more explicit: Iconic/Quality tokens refer to past experience, which in this case is the interaction that is coming to an end but could just as well be reference to past interactions (this Laver himself does not consider); Indexical/Energy tokens refer in this case to the present interaction (in a sense evaluate it) but also leads to a "Second" (in Peirce's terms), i.e. the next interaction, it being understood that if present interaction was pleasurable, the next one might also be so; Symbol/Relation tokens take this last aspect - potential future interactions - and tie it together with the fact that due to common acquaintances a future interaction is quite likely, for these people move in the same circles and are in this sense socially/symbolically (sociosemiotically?) bound together (this aspect, I think, could be much elaborated).
I'm sure that this kind of analysis could be taken even further and applied on other areas of small talk. For example, taking a more spacial, instead of temporal, approach, one could differentiate social relations in the following manner:
- Where we were. When people ask each other about they come from (Woher kommen Sie?, or even Malinowski's example of the Melanesian phrase, "Whence comest thou?") they implicitly attempt to gauge whether they come from the same place or at least one not too distant. People who grow up in the same town or city or even in the same area have a lot of qualities (in Peircean sense) in common, which makes it easier to associate.
- Where we are. Even the mere fact of being at in the same place at the same time is sometimes awfully meaningful, for example, when attending events, especially ones that might become historically important, such as protests and rallies (i.e. Martin Luther's March on Washington in 1963). Sometimes the fact of sharing a common time-space becomes important on its own, even in the self-same time-space.
- Where we are going. This aspect draws attention to common life-histories and life-goals. When people discuss travel they say stuff like "I'm definitely going to visit X someday" and if they both agree to this, even if they visit X at different times or not at all, the fact of sharing a common aspiration contributes to a feeling of bonding. A good example would be strangers at a summer festival discussing where they're going to school in the fall and discovering that they're going to the same school (I've had that experience).
The discussion about the temporal structure of the interaction comes to a close with a stunning point with reference to "Verbal and bodily rituals of greeting and parting" (1972) by the distinguished anthropologist Raymond Firth. Namely, the latter views phatic communion as a kind of interaction ritual and coined the term teletic rites "from the Greek concept of putting off the old and putting on the new, for such behaviour for greeting and parting, where the major stimulation is provided by the arrival or departure of a person from the social scene" (1972: 3).
Laver takes this term a step further by contrasting "the broader social macrocosm" to "the momentary microcosm of the encounter" (Laver 1975: 235). Namely, when dealing with "the comfortable management of the transition from noninteraction to full interaction, and the transition from interaction to noninteraction", interaction is the microcosm and noninteraction the macrocosm, so that the transitional ceremonies in the opening phase (from noninteraction to interaction) could be called proleptic rites and in the closing phase (from interaction to noninteraction) conversely analeptic rites.
The point of these distinctions cannot escape anyone familiar with Goffman's work on The presentation of the self and the ways in which people put on "faces" when interacting with other people. The core of his argument is that face-to-face interaction is in a sense a theatrical performance in which people attempt to control or guide the impressions that others may form of them. A very vivid illustration of a proleptic rite is given by Goffman when he noticed that people on the Scottish island he was studying were casual on their own but as soon as they noticed a stronger coming from the distance they put their faces in order, i.e. raised their eyebrows, put on a smile, etc. Goffman's writings are full of such illustrations and consequent analysis.
Laver captures the temporal aspect of these transitions in the following way: "To some degree, the opening phase looks inwards to the oncoming interaction, while the closing phase looks outwards, as it were, to the resumption of social life outside the momentary relationship of the encounter" (Laver 1975: 233). Here it is important to emphasize that, just like with Bateson's "communication about relationship", we are dealing with "the momentary relationship of the encounter" not the broader sense in which we understand "relationships" today.
But Laver has his own way of reaching from momentary communicative relationships to the understanding of relationships. (It may be noted that the transition is in some ways analogous to that between tokens and types.) Namely, he writes that the establishment of a working consensus is the principal function of proleptic rites and announcing "a continuing provisional consensus for future interactions" the principal function of analeptic rites.
"If this is a valid comment," he writes, "then it makes phatic communion and associated behavior a most important social and psychological instrument, in that the cumulative consensus about a relationship reached as the result of repeated encounters between the two participants constitutes the essence of that relationship" (Laver 1975: 232-233). The import of this suggestion cannot be understated. From the "working consensus" of token relationships (communicative encounters) we reach the "cumulative consensus" of relationship as a type.
In simpler words, what we believe about our relationship when we communicate ultimately forms the basis for what we believe about our relationship in general. Pleasant encounters lead to good relationships, uninteresting encounters to neutral relationships, and offensive encounters to hostile relationships. Laver then stresses the importance of communication skills is this regard: "Skill in managing the behavioral resources of phatic communion thus becomes not the triviality dismissively referred to as small talk, but a very basic skill essential to a major part of the psychosocial transactions that make up daily life" (ibid, 232-233).
To bring the point home again, Laver quotes Firth's statement about phatic communion being ritualistic because it follows patterned routines, and that it is a system of signs that convey not only overt messages but also covert ones, and, which is here most important, that greeting and parting behaviour "has adaptive value in facilitating social relations" (Firth 1972: 29-30; in Laver 1975: 234-235). "Adaptive value" is a workable term, but I'll let it be for the moment. For now I'll draw attention to Laver's interpretation of signs "other than overt" (i.e. covert) being "indexical messages which manage and control the interpersonal relationship between the participants" (ibid, 234-235).
Laver attributes the gleaning of indexical messages to the "exploratory function" of phatic communion. This exploration is necessary for participants "to feel their way towards the working consensus of their interaction" (Laver 1975: 220-221). The indexical factors involved include "personal characteristics of regional origin, social status, personality, age, sex, state of health, mood, and a good deal more" (ibid, 220-221). Further, Laver writes that "Between participants who are already acquainted, the exploratory function mentioned here serves to reconfirm previous information, and between strangers serves as an initial identification" (Laver 1975: 221).
While this basically goes to say that strangers need to evaluate and judge each other in various dimensions to identify the other person, "to explore, in a tentative way, the social identity and momentary state of mind of the other participant, in order to be able to define and construct an appropriate role for themselves in the rest of the interaction" and to reach what Goffman has called the "working consensus" (Laver 1975: 218-219), but between participants who are already acquainted there is already a cumulative consensus about their relationship.
I would stress here the concept of identification which is not without precedent in social psychology. Namely, this is exactly Kenneth Burke's term for what George Herbert Mead calls "participation in the other", that is, "the relativity of ordinary human experience in people's ability to correlate their experiences with those of others" (Burke & Zappen 2006: 338; note 10); or in Mead's own words, "the appearance of the other in the self, the identification of the other with the self, the reaching of self-consciousness through the other" (Mead 1934: 253; in Burke & Zappen 2006: 338; note 10).
Thus, identification can serve as a point of contact between Laver's understanding of the exploratory function of phatic communion and what Jurgen Ruesch terms communization after Charles Morris (who coincidentally edited most of Mead's works for publishing). The aim of communization in this exploratory sense is to "establish a common, though incomplete, frame of reference under which premises interaction can proceed" (Ruesch & Prestwood 1972[1950a]: 327).
In Laver's terms, the establishment and consolidation of the interpersonal relationship is "concerned with the communication of the identity and attributes of the interaction, and with their psychosocial relationship" (Laver 1975: 232). These aspects can once again be broken down with Peirce's categories: communication of identity has to do with qualities (in this case not of the interaction but of self); communication about attributes of the interaction has to do with the energy of the interaction (where is it leading, or, philosophically put, what resistance it offers); and communication about the participant's psychosocial relationship is readily comparable to Bateson's "communication about relationship" (i.e. Laver's own examples of communicating about past encounters, about the present encounter and about future encounters due to mutual acquaintances tentatively fall into this category).
Last, but not least, Laver also frames the relationship in terms of the definition of the situation (another one of Goffman's terms). He distinguishes interactions where the participants already know each well from utilitarian encounters "such as a university lecture, buying a railway ticket, or talking to a telephone operator" on the basis of whether "the role structure of the encounter is known to the interactants in advance" (Laver 1975: 219).
In my view this is a distinction handled well elsewhere in social psychology in terms of enigmatic and paradigmatic episodes (read: encounters). Namely, enigmatic episodes, such as hanging around with a friend, have neither an explicit set of rules, nor are they produced by well-established causal mechanism; as opposed to paradigmatic episodes, such as the university lecture and various bureaucratic interactions, which have explicit set of rules, are produced by well-established causal mechanisms, and have clear explanations (cf. Harré & Secord 1976: 12).
The relevant connection with Laver's ideas here is the admonishment that one of the functions of phatic communion is "to contribute to a continuing consensus which can stand as a tentative pre-structuring of the relationship experienced in the current interaction" (Laver 1975: 227). What this implies is that, simply put, past encounters structure present and future encounters. This is not all that revolutionary an idea, but this detail can become relevant to distinguish interactions which are pre-structured according to the roles and rules introduced from the broader social macrocosm, as opposed to those in which the roles and rules are as-if self-made in the microcosm of the interaction.
Phatic communion contributes mostly to the latter, as Laver argues that it is almost needless for those utilitarian interactions: your interaction with the lecturer or clerk is so routine and predictable that engaging in introduction and small talk can be disruptive (this may contribute to viewing service people like cashiers, waiters, taxi-drivers, etc. as almost "non-persons"); as opposed to your encounters with friends and acquaintances which depend on getting to know each other, forming a working consensus on your own terms and by way of cumulative consensus achieving a personal relationship.
And lastly, Laver should be commended for his attention to the semantic dimension of phatic communion, which is all too often almost completely neglected on the assumption that the referential content of particular utterances are irrelevant. Laver argues that the semantic meaning of the tokens is indeed relevant to the nature of the interaction in at least two ways, "firstly by constraining the semantic theme within which the participants must make their choices of tokens in a particular occasion of phatic communion, and secondly, and more importantly, by providing the participants with a subtle means of communicating to each other their views about such indexical aspects of their momentary relationship as their relative social status" (Laver 1975: 222).
I would argue that these two aspects cover, in terms of Ruesch and Bateson, both "communication about communication" (metacommunication proper) and "communication about relationship" (the μ-function). Thus, on the one hand the specific utterances used in phatic communion condition or restrain the semantic field of said communion by implicitly communicating the topic of communication. That is, it helps the participants to select the code or the relevant speech register as well as the subject of discussion. Thus, when a phatic communion in the smoking room opens with one person asking another for light they may very likely begin to dwell on the merits and demerits of smoking. Likewise, when opening with a comment about the weather the discussion may concentrate on the climate, the geography of region, what kinds of clouds there are, etc.
And on the other hand, phatic communion has a semantic dimension related to relationships in the sense that the specific utterances used communicate about identity and social status, even on the phonetic level: "When a person speaks, he reveals often very detailed indexical information about his personal characteristics" (Laver 1975: 221). Here it is wise to emphasize in Laver's phrasing, the aspect of "communicating to each other their views about such indexical aspects". That is, how we speak about something often says a lot about how we feel about it. This, in turn, plays a role in whether a working consensus will be achieved or not.
Further, "part of any individual's expertise in the (often quite extended) interchanges of phatic communion is his ability to sustain a particular semantic theme, once one of the participants has embarked upon that theme" (Laver 1975: 222). This is where the phatic function meets the properly semantic, referential function: knowledge about common topics of discussion contributes to effective phatic communion. If someone strikes up a casual conversation about smoking or the weather it can be useful to have extensive knowledge on the subject, just to keep phatic communion going. "So the semantic sense of the linguistic tokens is not entirely irrelevant, in at least this limited aspect" (Laver 1975: 222).
In conclusion I would like to quibble a little about Laver's understanding of phatic communion in general. He begins the paper by writing that "When Malinowski invented the term [phatic communion], he crystallized a conceptual area that had been previously amorphous, and the analysis of the different functions of language took a step further forward" (Laver 1975: 215). While it is true that the analysis of the different functions of language was greatly advanced by the introduction of the phatic function, it is not true that he crystallized this conceptual area. Or if he did crystallize the phenomenon, in the sense of giving it a label, he did not crystallize the conceptual area, as modern notions like phatic image, phatic labor, and phatic technology testify.
I am especially unsatisfied with Laver's distinction between phatic communion in the narrow sense and phatic communion as normally understood. He considers of phatic communion in the narrow sense as simply "the participants interacting through speech" and of the normal understanding as "applying to choices from a limited set of stereotyped phrases of greeting, parting, commonplace remarks about the weather, and small talk, strongly characterizes the marginal phase of interaction only" (Laver 1975: 218).
The distinction he draws is between keeping interaction going by "a mere exchange of words" only, and phatic communion understood as the exchange of words involved mainly in the opening and closing the interaction. That is, the "narrow" sense is oriented towards the "medial" phase of maintaining interaction, and the "broad" sense is oriented towards the "marginal" phases. This distinction may have been useful at the time, as phatic communion was often, and very popularly, devalued as "talking for the sake of talking" (cf. Hymes 1971: 43-44), but now that we have overcome this simplification a different outlook is in order.
I put forward that this distinction cannot hold water anymore. Phatic communion and phatic function have long surpassed the bounds of speech as well as interaction. Partly due to Jakobson's somewhat ambiguous definition of phatic function, "phatic" has become synonymous with "the channel function" and become the study of communication in its "contact" aspect. That is why I suggest that Phatics narrowly understood deals with the linguistic aspects of phatic communion while Phatics broadly understood deals with phatic forms and functions that surpass language and even conventional understanding of interaction. For a phatic study of modern means of communication a much broader framework is necessary than is offered here, as helpful as it is.
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