Alex! Come here a minute!
Not that we should naively assume that there is a one-to-one correlation between the linguistic form imperative and the delivery of a speech act which counts as a directive. The conative function is frequently carried by features from the code which appear to be innocently signalling something quite different. Persuasion is a subtle art and, no doubt, at its most successful when it is not recognized as such by the recipient; no wonder the advertising industry in capitalist societies finds it necessary to publish a code of conduct for the regulation of its members.
Phatic function. We have dealt with functions which derive from a focus on the content of the message, on the sender and on the receiver(s) and now, with the phatic function, come to focus on the channel; on the fact that participants are in contact. The role of language of this type is to signal that one could communicate (greetings and channel-clearing signals such as 'hello'on the telephone) typify this or that one is, for the moment, not willing to discuss any particular topic; in Britain, at least, the weather and the unsatisfactory nature of public transport serve as suitable phatic topics.
It may appear that the phatic is referential but this is only true in the secondary sense that it is difficult to communicate in language without referring to something. Consider the following simple greeting ritual:
A Hello. How are you?
B Fine thanks. How are you?
A Fine. See you later.
B Yes. OK. See you.
The 'how are you?' looks like a genuine enquiry about B's physical and mental state of health and all competent users of English know that the only acceptable answer to the 'question' is one which precisely does not provide that kind of information; a recital of one's aches and pains tends to generate annoyance rather than sympathy.
But what of the context? What if A were B's doctor and they are in his surgery? Clearly, the conversation would be inappropriate and the doctor would be rightly annoyed that B was wasting his time and that of other patients. If the two meet at a party though...
Poetic function. In this case, the orientation is towards the message and the selection of elements from the code which draw attention to themselves and, hence, to the text. The poetic use of language has, traditionally, made use of unexpected collocations and marked thematic structures and patterning – at both the syntactic and the phonological level – which is striking through its repetitiveness or though the breaking of expectations of repetition. Rhyme- and
rhythm-schemes are a clear example of this; consider the strict conventions of the limerick or the Petrarchan and Shakespearian sonnet forms.
There are, it should be recognized, 'poetic' uses of language which are an everyday occurrence; genre such as story-telling and joke-telling, children's rhymes, football shouts. The poetic function is not the preserve of the poet alone.
Metalinguistic function. This final function derives from an orientation to the code; language being used to talk about language. Dictionaries and grammars have, par excellence, a metalinguistic function as, indeed, has the whole of discourse in the discipline of linguistics itself.
There are, as we might expect, metalinguistic utterances and texts which are produced by people who are not professional linguists. Communicators not infrequently check their speech as they go along, particularly when verbalizing the search for an appropriate lexical item:
Perhaps we should look into opportunities
for fu. ..fu. ..funding. No that’s not it.
I've lost the word. What do you call it
when a company gives a student money to
do research? Sponsorship. That's it. Yes.
Sponsorship.
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