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The Limits of Implicature in the Phatic Use of English

Summary/Abstract: Drawing on the basic concepts of pragmatics and the functional theory of language, this paper treats the phatic use of language as very significant speech which runs in a transferred sense. With weak and strong implicatures characteristic of it, the phatic use of English is nothing short of poetic effects while it is of immediate relevance to the participants. The role of imagination may be minor in small talk, but that of contexts (co-text, the context of situation and the context of culture) is major. Even when the knowledge of the language is proficient, the phatic use of English may be challenging to the native speaker and more so to the foreigner, as the material illustrating the perception of irony confirms. Since implicature is flexible and must be pinpointed by the foreigner in social conversation, the phatic use of English trains intellect no less than verbal skills of the participant.

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