Page 147 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

LANGUAGE, FUNCTIONS OF

science writing, courtroom testimony and so on, several other
functions have come to be identified as important in everyday
language use. One well-known account of language function is
supplied by Jakobson (1960), who identified the phatic, the regulatory
(or ‘conative’, as he called it), the emotive, the aesthetic (or ‘poetic’ as he
called it) and the metalinguistic functions as equally deserving of
attention.
Many situations, for instance, involve a use of language for which
issues of truth value are not at stake. Consider, for instance, situations
such as telephoning a friend. If you ask ‘How’s things?’ or ‘How are
you?’, you are quite likely to be answered, ‘Fine’. Subsequent
conversation, of course, may well reveal that your interlocutor has one
leg in plaster and can walk only with using crutches. And yet you
would not thereby consider the initial response – ‘Fine’ – to be
untruthful. This is because we commonly use language not just for
articulating ideas but for making and sustaining contact, often using
quite ritualised formulae which are almost devoid of content. This use
is known as the phatic function of language. Conversations about the
weather between relative strangers at bus stops in the UK are elaborate
exercises in the phatic function.
Language is also used to affect the actions and dispositions of others
by commands, requests, instructions and other more subtle acts of
verbal persuasion. The language of air-traffic control, of advertising
and of political campaigns relies heavily on this function, which is
known as the regulatory or conative function.
In the case of the regulatory function the focus of the language is on
the actions and dispositions of the addressee. In contrast to this,
language may be used to express the feelings and dispositions of the
speaker irrespective of whether an audience is present. This is known
as the emotive function – language used (sometimes involuntarily) for the
expression of feelings. Scratching the paintwork on the car is likely to
lead to an outburst of the emotive function.
Language may also be used as a source of intrinsic pleasure. Young
children learning their first language may derive great pleasure from
playing with the sound properties of language, repeating and
modulating sound sequences, sometimes without regard for their
communicative potential, as in the following sequence between twins
aged thirty-three months:
A: zacky sue
B: (laughing) zacky sue zacky sue (both laugh) ah
A: appy

132