Translations:Wiktionnaire:Actualités/031-octobre-2017/70/en

Among the six big functions of language defined by Roman Jakobson, the phatic function ensures that the communication channel works well.

These are words and expressions like "you see" or "do you follow?" but also words used at the begin of a telephone conversation such as allô?.

Marina Yaguello extends the analysis to all discourses which only have the goal to maintain the conversation without sharing anything at all.

By concentrating on the level of sentences and words it is difficult for a dictionary to describe these usages. One one hand there exist a great deal of variation in the used terms, but finding written attestations isn't always straightforward.

On the other hand it is because of the difficulty to explain the function of these terms well.

Sometimes they are entire sentences, including a verb, emptied of its meaning, to fullfil an entire communicational purpose.

— a chronicle by Noé