Phatic Language, was Re: Race Math & Language

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Dec 6 10:50:29 PST 2000


Carrol Cox wrote:


>Consider the huge number of list posts (despite universal
>condemnation of the practice) which consist merely of
>quoting someone else's post and adding "I agree" or something
>to that effect. Purely phatic.

So your periodic eruptions where you denounce someone as "silly" or announce that you've assiduosly been ignoring someone you've obviously been paying some attention to - are these phatic too? Phatic utterances with a negative sign in front of them?

Doug



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