Visiting Professor of Communication John Adams was interviewed for an Albany Times Union article titled "Pavlovian patter" about our automatic verbal personal exchanges and what they say about us (2/3/08).
The article quotes Adams, "There is cultural meaning attached to utterances even when we know the words to be literally meaningless." It continues, "Adams, an expert in rhetoric, uses the example of a pair of colleagues passing one another in the hall with the exchange, 'What's up?'/'How's it going?'
"The utterances seem like something else ought to happen that somebody should answer the question," says Adams. "But you're managing your relationship just by acknowledging the presence of the other in your vicinity."
According to the article "These automatic scripts are known as 'phatic communication' a concept introduced by the groundbreaking Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski about a century ago. Phatic communication is not meant to be taken literally, Malinowski, wrote; instead, it performs a social function.
The article quotes Adams, "There is cultural meaning attached to utterances even when we know the words to be literally meaningless." It continues, "Adams, an expert in rhetoric, uses the example of a pair of colleagues passing one another in the hall with the exchange, 'What's up?'/'How's it going?'
"The utterances seem like something else ought to happen that somebody should answer the question," says Adams. "But you're managing your relationship just by acknowledging the presence of the other in your vicinity."
According to the article "These automatic scripts are known as 'phatic communication' a concept introduced by the groundbreaking Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski about a century ago. Phatic communication is not meant to be taken literally, Malinowski, wrote; instead, it performs a social function.
