Rodney Dale

One of my interests is to listen to what people say, and this month’s essay is to share some of my observations with you. Phatic conversation is a delightful concept. Unfortunately, the word ‘phatic’ conjures up visions of fatuous — which, indeed, phatic conversation often is. But fatuous is derived from the Latin ‘to gape’, while the Greek-derived ‘phatic’ (with a ph) means ‘for the purpose of establishing social contact’. Phatic speech comprises words and phrases such as ‘Hello’, and ‘How are you this morning?’ or, if you’re royalty, ‘Where have you come from today?’

One oft-used phatic exchange (and I’d be surprised if nobody here has taken part in it in the last week) begins:

A ‘Hi’

‘Hi’, by the way, is the modern universal greeting. People use it on the mobile, where ‘Good evening’, for example, might sound rather pedantic. ‘Hi’ seems particularly intrusive during the team introductions on University Challenge, and outstanding is the team that eschews it.

SO ...

A ‘Hi’

B ‘Hi — how you?’

A ‘Fine thanks, how you?’

B ‘Fine thanks’

Sometimes things get out of hand, and B (who has already asked ‘How you?’) asks it a second time. Sometimes the lines get in the wrong order, and one of the participants will say ‘Fine thanks’ without the prompt of ‘How are you?’

An advanced embodiment of this conversation is when it takes place between two people on bicycles, pedalling slowly in opposite directions, often turning in their respective saddles to keep facing one another as they draw apart. This is better not attempted when the street is dotted with parked cars, skips, &c.

The next stage of the phatic conversation — if there is an opportunity — may address the weather, still phatic in that what is said is usually self evident, for example: ‘That’s a wet old morning’ or, more often — perhaps because it’s devoid of specific meaning:

‘That’s a funny old day’, to which the standard reply is:

‘That IS a funny old day’ — (or, indeed, a wet old morning).

One of the participants may then observe: ‘That was bright sunshine at five o’clock this morning’, whereupon the other will make a comment to demonstrate that he (or possibly she), too, was also up at five o’clock this morning — or even earlier, a process which, when applied to National Service release groups was known as ‘gripping’.

There may then be some reference to the weather forecast, perhaps using the interesting phrase ‘it talks of rain’ or ‘it speaks of rain’, or ‘he says it’s going to rain’. All these refer to the man in the wireless, or the television. Some meteorological phenomenon may then be adduced — for example ‘That was raining hard in Littleport all the week end, and yet we’ve hardly had a drop here’. And that leads to another winning formula — ‘at least it’s dry now, that’s the main thing.’

Keep an ear open for these main things — they come in all shapes and sizes.

‘At least he’s passed his exam — that’s the main thing.’

‘At least I’ve got a tank full of petrol — that’s the main thing.’

‘At least I won’t have to chop the tree down — that’s the main thing.’

And so on.

It’s a short step from the phatic utterance to the meaningless stock phrase. Shop girls, waitresses and telephone salespeople tend to add ‘at all’ to their enquiries. ‘Would you like anything else at all?’ is silly but passable; ‘Do you know your address at all?’ or even ‘Do you have a first name at all?’ are downright daft. ‘Obviously’ is another word used not just superfluously, but stupidly. ‘Obviously’ almost imples that the addressee is not aware, which makes its use even sillier. ‘Obviously, we haven’t got the money to dig the road up’ soundbites the Look East expert in hard hat and reflective jacket, or ‘Obviously, we haven’t found the murder weapon yet’ says Inspector Plod. No? You tell us.

A Post Office — sorry, Consignia — girl started to reply to my telephoned query: ‘Well, obviously, I’m in Southend . . .’ whereupon I asked her why that should be obvious to me in Haddenham ringing an 0800 number,. ‘Well,’ she replied, ‘It’s just a thing you say.’

Thinking about what people mean can lead to a problem when you give the correct, rather than the expected, answer to a question. When a switchbird asks: ‘May I say who’s calling?’ I always say most politely (for I have nothing to hide): ‘Of course!’ This usually results in a pause of audible lameness, and then a weak: ‘Who’s calling?’

Then there’s that strange claim of continual loquaciousness: ‘I always say.’ ‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk, I always say.’ ‘Really? I heven’t heard you say thast before.’ When reporting speech, some people (presumably more mobile) ‘turn round and say’ — and this after having ‘sat down’, or ‘sat down round a table.’ My accountant once said to me: ‘We’ve got to sit down at the table and talk about this.’ ‘But we are sitting down at the table’ I pointed out; but the irony was lost. Very often such conversations end lamely with ‘... and we’ll take it from there.’ You can hear this one coming, because the speaker pauses slightly, flounderingly ‘So I’ll give you a call when I get back ... and we’ll take it from there.’

Also in this category of accuracy we often find the formula: ‘there’s plenty more potato if anyone wants it’, overlooking the fact that there’s plenty more even if no one wants it. I particularly remember a visit to the Fire Station; at the end of the demonstration, the man said: ‘Well, that’s the end of the demonstration, so now we can all go to the canteen for a cup of tea — for which there’s a small charge — unless anyone has any questions ...’ whereupon two of us immediately piped up: ‘in which case it’s free’.

Talking of tea, there’s a phrase triggered by the wielder of the teapot, who says: ‘Would you like some more tea?’ to which comes the response ‘No thank you, I’m very happy.’ Unfortunately for the sake of symmetry, we never hear ‘Yes please, I’m very sad.’

A bishop friend of mine who has retired — out of his diocese, as is the custom — tells me that people are beginning to sidle up to him in his new village saying: ‘Are you who I think you are?’ This belongs in the same compartment as his wife’s experience when chatting with strangers; should it come out that she was a bishop’s wife, people would come over all serious and apologise: ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ The apology was presumably for the erroneously perceived impropriety of chatting with a bishop’s wife, rather than the notion that it was no fun being married to a bishop.

Certain phrases in modern speech I find immensely irritating. the structure of ‘Bus Station’ has been transferred to give us ‘Train Station’, but to me that’s just the Station. Riding implies the agency of a horse; to talk of horse riding — or, worse still, horseback riding — is superfluous, and solecistic. People talk of ‘weighing scales’, and ‘bed sheets’, and give birth to ‘little babies’ — but I suppose this is used in the Mabel Lucie Atwell sense, rather than to imply that the new arrival is premature or below average weight. And so we progress up a synecdochial road to two examples that make me shudder loudly — The ‘Our Father’ meaning the Lord’s prayer, and ‘Times Tables’ meaning multiplication tables. And please don’t talk about ‘maths’ — or even ‘math’ — if you really mean ‘arithmetic’ — which most people do most of the time.

There are certain other gestalt phenomena: present the right triggers and the result is entirely predictable. Talk about crosswords, and somewone will enjoin us of the necessity of getting used to the mind of the compiler. Talk about pocket calculators, and someone will explain that there’s more power in the latest models than in a 50s machine that occupied an entire floor of an office block. Japanese cooking? There are only three chefs in Britain licenced to prepare that deadly fish. Whereupon someone else will point out that the fish has lost its poison anyway. Everlasting light bulbs? Suppressed by the industry because thay would do them out of business. And so on and so on. There are plenty more where these come from: malapropisms, invented words and phrases, but they’ll have to wait for another time. At least I’ve written them down — that’s the main thing.