Happy Easter everybody

Every single Easter you monsters give me a million notes on this post

Happy Good Friday

This is why it is important to meow at loved ones.

A largish percentage of human vocalizations are this, too!  When your human co-worker says “Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?” or comments on atmospheric conditions or other readily-observable features of your surroundings, or generally statements that seemingly convey no useful or novel information whatsoever, the true purpose of these vocalizations is to develop and/or maintain the social unit of the workplace!   In effect, they are saying, “We are experiencing this situation together.  We often experience situations together.  Let’s be allies!”

Some humans will even make vocalizations of this kind to complete strangers, such as when waiting in a line or using public transportation.  This behavior is especially common in situation that may involve some form of inconvenience or frustration, such as waiting in a long line or experiencing a delay.  In these contexts, the vocalizations communicate, “We are both experiencing the same unpleasant situation; let’s not make it worse by being aggressive to one another.”  

There is a linguistic word for this and it’s called phatic expressions! Here’s what Wikipedia says about them:

In linguistics, a phatic expression (English: /ˈfætɪk/, FAT-ik) is a communication which primarily serves to establish or maintain social relationships. In other words, phatic expressions have mostly socio-pragmatic rather than denotational functions. They can be observed in everyday conversational exchanges,[1] as in, for instance, exchanges of social pleasantries that do not seek or offer information of intrinsic value but rather signal willingness to observe conventional local expectations for politeness.[2]

Phatic communion at first appears to break Grice’s conversational maxims, because it denotationally appears to give information that is unnecessary, untrue, or irrelevant. However, phatic communion plays an important role in language and has important connotational meanings that do not break these maxims[6] and needs to be understood as an important part of language in its role in establishing, maintaining, and managing bonds of sociality between participants,[7] as well as creating feelings of solidarity and familiarity, and putting participants at ease.[8]

Many expressions generally considered to be phatic (see below) may be a genuine request for information in certain contexts. For example, in British English, “How are you?” is a phatic expression used when greeting someone one knows, especially when a participant wants to initiate conversation. However, it can be asked sincerely, and this must be inferred from context, such as when a friend gives bad news, or tone, such falling intonation to show it as a genuine question (as is with w/h-word questions), or speaking more quietly. Authenticity of the question can also be emphasised by the addition of the word “feeling” (“How are you feeling?”).

Also here is a @lingthusiasm episode about phatic expressions for way more examples and a description of how phrases can go from literal to phatic to (sometimes) literal again (“Dear X” in salutations is a good example of this!).

HOW did this get ANY notes

"Als je plezier had was het geen verspilde tijd, plezier hebben is letterlijk een van de beste componeten van het bestaan."

everyone else in 3rd life: be careful around scar he's dangerous... he'll scam you out of everything you own... What could he possibly be planning...

scar:

[Image ID: Tweet from lilia (@/ violetxnds) reading: "fuck it we ball" becomes far more weighty once we account for the pre-existing axiom that is "ball is life," for the latter effectively transforms the former into "fuck it we live." and what maxim could be more gravely important than that which urges man to persist at all costs? /End ID]