‘Hallo hoe gaan dit, wat maak jy?’: Phatic communication, the mobile phone and coping strategies in a South African context

Abstract

This paper looks at the ways in which the mobile phone has become a means through which phatic communication is being expressed. More specifically, the paper shows how, in an impoverished community such as the Wesbank township in South Africa, phatic communication and 'maintaining a connected presence' are vital strategies of social networking. In a context of severe and desperate impoverishment, loneliness, chronic unemployment and boredom, the exchange of phatic communicational gestures such as a text message or a short phone call forms one of the many coping strategies that the residents in Wesbank employ to face up to the harsh conditions of poverty and insecurity.

Contact discourse

“…Contact commentaries refers to primarily written commentaries found in one-to-many participation frameworks, although such commentaries can also include the use of memes and icons in social media and SMS texts as described by Blommaert & Varis (2015), Velghe (2015), and others. Like the comments we find in conversational narratives and gossip (Ochs & Capps 2001; Georgakopoulou 2007; Besnier 2009), these commentaries are typically about contact with some unexpected social practice, person, or event.…”