Communicative culture and the role of phatic function in interpersonal communication

The article analyses a language function which helps to personalize and control communication arranging it in accordance with communicative norms and rituals. The choice of forms of interpersonal communication is regulated by norms and motivated by conditions of communicative behavior. Interpersonal communication peculiarities are connected in particular with the forms of indirect communication implementing the phatic language function. Phatic communication is viewed as a special form of interpersonal communication which is not connected with the quality of information transfer and which is targeted at regulating interpersonal relations. With the help of special verbal means the specific cause of communication, which is the control of communication arrangement, is implemented. Phatic utterances provide the success of informative function implementation in the future. The article also describes the notion of communicative culture. Standards of communicative culture are connected with the systematization of communication forms and rules in their relation to various communicative functions of the language, phatic function in particular, and national and cultural characteristics of their implementation in speech. Typical cases of contact making and contact maintaining are part of communicative culture's sphere. They are the most important means of regulating interpersonal relations. Representatives of a certain communicative culture know common rules which normalize their verbal behavior and dictate the necessity or lack of necessity to start the interaction. Interpersonal behavior is based on norms of communicative culture which can be defined as loose norms of communication building correlated with speech forms and targeted at people's behavior. It happens in a familiar ethnocultural environment and requires knowledge of phatic communication norms. Phatic communication requires specific consideration since success and efficiency of interpersonal interaction is predetermined not only by the level of language proficiency but also by the knowledge of social and cultural norms, national and cultural peculiarities of communication.