单选题
Mrs. P sneezes violently. Mrs. O says "Bless you!" Mrs. P says "Thank you." Again, this hardly seems to be a case of language being used to communicate ideas, but rather to maintain a comfortable relationship between people. Its sole function is to provide a means of avoiding a situation which both parties might otherwise find embarrassing. No factual content is involved. Similarly, the use of such phrases as "Good morning" or "Pleased to meet you", and ritual exchanges about health or the weather, do not communicate ideas in the usual sense. Sentences of this kind are usually automatically produced, and stereotyped (固定不变) in structure. They often state the obvious (e. g. Lovely day!) or have no content at all (e. g. Hello!). They certainly require a special kind of explanation, and this is found in the idea that language is here being used for the purpose of maintaining rapport (融洽) between people. The anthropologist Malinowski coined the phrase "phatic communication" to refer to this social function of language, which arises out of the basic human .need to signal friendship -- or, at least, a lack of hatred. For someone to withhold these sentences when they are expected, by staying silent, is a sure sign of distance, alienation, even danger. These illustrations apply to English and to many other European languages. But cultures vary greatly in the topics which they permit as phatic communication. The weather is not so universal a conversation filler as English might like to think! For example, women in Burundi, central Africa, upon taking leave, are quite often heard to say, routinely and politely, "I must go home now, or my husband Mil beat me." Moreover, phatic communication itself is far from universal: Some cultures say little, and prefer silence, as in the case of the Paliyans of southern India, or the Aritama of Colombia.