phatic communication

1. 1.

   conversational speech used to communicate sociability more than information

   Synonymsphatic speech

   Broaderconversation

Questions about phatic communication

What does phatic communication mean?

phatic communication means "conversational speech used to communicate sociability more than information".

What is another word for phatic communication?

Close synonyms include phatic speech. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is phatic communication a common word?

phatic communication is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.