‘패틱 커뮤니온’의 전통적 개념 규정과 그 소통기능 및 역할에 대하여

Abstract

This paper aims at two goals. One of them is to investigate the social significances, functions, and roles of the ‘phatic communion’ that was initiated by B. Malinowski and introduced by R. Jakobson as one of the basic linguistic functions. The other is to show the communicative validities assigned by the phatic utterances in the course of communication. The greetings and silence-avoiding/breaking chats not only confirm and maintain the mutual bondage and solidarity among the conversation participants but also support the predictable and controllable conversation situations through the consensus of conversation participant's emotional feelings. Widely accepted opinion that phatic utterances are non-referential should be properly restricted. Although the ‘phatic communion’ is unaccountable from the viewpoint of informationality, it should not necessarily be non-referential or semantically empty. Because the ‘phatic communion’ is far from the pursuit of information exchange, it seems to be uncompatible with the Grice's Cooperative Principle. However, these seemingly uncompatible communicative principles show harmonious compatability and the phatic utterances prove the validity of the Grice's Principle. They can be regarded as an effort to find out common grounds between the conversation participants or a agreeable consensus among them. Based on this kind of effort, the ‘phatic communion’ can be extended beyond the utterance level. Furthermore, it can be applied to the verbal and non-verbal communicative attempts that pursue some harmonious relationship among the conversation participants.