> It's been 50 years since I read Hard Times, but I think Mr. McChoakumchild
> in that book would disapprove of phatic speech -- precisely because he
> believes there are only facts, not human needs and desires, in the world.
The irony of course is that it's precisely such individuals who tend to evoke, if not demand, the most phatic lubrication from their interlocutors. In particularly twisted cases that can take a *gestural* form of colluding in the maintenance of contrived silences - silences taken and felt as indicators of their guardians' relative superiority over those chattering imbeciles over there.
Dangers everywhere.