A Study On Chinese Phatics From The Perspective Of Adaptation Theory

Phatics is used to establish and maintain the harmonious interpersonalrelationship of the involved communicators without any information or opinionexchange in daily communication. In other words, even with little or no informationexchange, phatics still plays a significant role in people’s daily communication.Because of this, the researches on phatics then are popular.The term phatics was originally proposed by the British Polish anthropologistMalinowski in his publication “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages”(1923), and this term was then widely accepted in the field of linguistics. And alsoafter that, the study of phatics has become a very hot topic, including from theperspective of functional linguistics, pragmatics, cross-cultural communication and soon. And all of these studies are fruitful. However, there is no study based on theAdaptation Theory proposed by the linguist Verschueren.In order to deepen and enrich the research of phatics, based on Verschueren’sAdaptation Theory and the qualitative analysis of examples, this paper makes acomprehensive study of the Chinese phatics. It aims at helping language learners orlanguage users have a clear knowledge of Chinese phatics. At the same time, thispaper tries to explore the origin, the classification of phatics with the purpose to offertheoretical guidance for communicators’ language choice-making.Verschueren holds that language has three basic characteristics: variability,negotiability and adaptability among them, the core one--adaptability has four angles:contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics ofadaptability and salience of the adaptation processes. These four angles are correlatedwith each other. In the contextual correlates of adaptability, as the objective context,“context” includes all factors that affect linguistic choice-making. The object ofcontextual adaptation contains three worlds: social world, mental world and physicalworld. Verschueren points out that the process of language use is, in fact, a process ofchoice-making and this choice-making is dynamic instead of remaining unchanged. In communication, the linguistic choice of communicators is not arbitrary but to makeadaptation to the three worlds constantly.As a necessary part of daily communication, the use of phatics is also adynamic choice-making and is determined by the three factors. In communication, thecommunicators’ would constantly make adaptation so as to meet the contextual needsand achieve the communicative goals. In actual communication, what factors shouldthe choice of phatics adapt to and how to adapt?According to Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, contextual correlates ofadaptability includes communicative context and linguistic context, and thecommunicative context adaptation is the major factor of adaptation. And the choice ofphatics is mainly to adapt to the communicative context, that is, the social world, themental world and the physical world. The use of phatics is first to adapt to thecommunicative world, which refers to the social conventions, such as thecommunicators’ social status, social relation, social distance, their age difference andso on. The communicators’ communication is affected by these factors consciously orunconsciously. For example, communicators would choose more formal phatics tothose who are not so close and vice versa. Secondly, the choice of phatics is to adaptto the mental world of both sides such as psychological needs, security needs,belongingness needs and love needs, esteem needs and so on. The last factor is toadapt to the physical world, that is, the influence of the temporal factors and physicaldistance. In using phatics, people will consciously adjust the sound volume accordingto the physical distance and choose different language according to the time, likesaying “Good morning” in the morning and “Good evening” in the evening, etc.. Inadapting to the three contextual factors, the communicators achieve theircommunicative goals.