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Excuse Me

Posted on Wed Feb 13, 09:33 PM in Watch Your Language

Somewhere in my far and distant past, my brain latched onto language and made it a priority. Not just in the way I picked up books and read voraciously; I really listened to everything people said and devoured it in the same way as the books. Here’s the problem: spoken language is different from written language. I never put this together until our good friend William was talking to us about language and introduced us to the term phatic communion. This term was coined by an anthropologist and is used to describe the kind of communication that serves more as a placeholder in social interaction than it does a container for information:

[…] such phatic communion centres on comments about the weather, on personal appearance, enquiries about health, or affirmations about everyday things. It serves in an atmosphere-setting capacity.

Like me, you’re probably familiar with the concept, if you didn’t exactly know there was a name for it. But this kind of concept has gotten me into trouble. I apparently do not have a language tolerance for phatic communion; I recognize the incoming gesture and immediately my mind revolts and answers meaningfully, instead of running through the motions of the exchange, to establish an “atmosphere.” Long ago, my mind put importance on language as a means to communicate ideas, and I think any time I witness (or am encouraged to take part in) literally meaningless exchanges, it frustrates me. I can now acknowledge that most other people have been socialized differently, and their expectations are different… but I still find it hard to reciprocate, and at the times when I do, I later feel small and cheap. I would rather pass by someone and say nothing if nothing moves me, than say something socially obligatory.

So, I think about speech a lot, about language I hear and language I read. And it struck me the other day that there is a very common phrase we tend to use that falls somewhere near the “phatic communion” camp, but not quite all the way in it. And that phrase is “Excuse me.”

I was at the gym on Super Bowl Sunday. The thought was to avoid the crowds; as it turned out, most gym members felt the need for pre-atonement of game-related gastronomical sins and the place was packed to the gills. Nowhere was this felt more than in the locker room. The narrow aisle between rows of narrow lockers with one narrow bench between doesn’t accommodate many people simultaneously, but most people manage and are nice about it, and that particular Sunday was no exception.

However, being the language nerd that I am, I did note one exchange which irked me as much as it made me cogitate. I was changing a piece of clothing which requires me to stick my elbows out Chicken Dance-style and made sure to look around so as not to knock anyone out… but, I must have missed the woman who was trundling up behind me to exit the locker room, because all of a sudden I hear “Excuse me” right behind me, and before I know it, she had gone past me and out the door. During all this time, my elbows were still airborne.

I stopped to ponder this. The woman needed to get past me due to the crowds. Had I known she was there, I would have made it easier for her to pass. In fact, had I had the time, I would have made sure I didn’t gift her with an elbow to the eye (which she nearly took). However, by the time she spoke, she was already well in to her planned path, so I might assume that regardless of my behavior (modified or no), her actions were going to remain the same from start to finish. Her use of “excuse me” was not imploring, nor was it exactly imperative; it was an announcement of intentions. It was not a request for me to change my actions; it was a proclamation of hers.

Then I made it a point to observe the actions around the use of these two words in the coming days. “Excuse me” seems to have devolved from polite request to a shorthand broadcast for “Comin’ through!” In my situation, the woman did not speak and wait for me to actually excuse her; she was practically on top of me as she said it. And I’ve observed very similar situations to mine, leading me to believe that, like “How are you doing?”, this is another instance where I’m woefully behind the social curve in spoken language comprehension.

The SO thinks that this should be categorized under phatic communion, but I’m not sure. This is different from “establishing atmosphere.” This isn’t devoid of meaning; it’s a change in meaning. It’s words being used in a totally different way than their meaning implies. And let’s not even start about the complete lack of “please” and “thank you” surrounding the phrase, either…

The whole affair has me mourning the slow divorce of speech from thought. Excuse me, but don’t people think about what they are actually saying anymore?