Talk:Phatic expressions and social conventions

complete rewrite lol

This seems really bad for pedagogy. I think this should be rewritten to describe how and why toki pona avoids phatic phrases instead of serving as a list of lexicalized phatic phrases. The pu phrase book is good but other than that I don't like this page at all. Lipamanka (talk) 03:45, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Also coming to dislike this article. The title alone is unwieldy, and suggests a potential split into "Phatic expressions" and "Social conventions". The example sentences seem too numerous or detailed, and the formatting used to accommodate them is unusual. The "Phrase Book" section is now redundant to the source text, aside from adding sitelen pona.

This could be split into several articles under a "Social conventions" category, such as:

• "Phatic expressions" — (per lipamanka) how and why they're avoided; much more general strategies for common categories like greetings etc.; full prose without Template:Example
• "Formality" — whether Toki Pona has sociolinguistic registers (arguably usage categories and joke words create them?) or markers of respect
• "Politeness" — why Toki Pona is described as "polite by default"; how politeness varies by culture and Toki Pona places importance on directness and clarity; how to express the intended functions of politeness in a literal and pona way
• "List of Phrase Book entries" — give each phrase a section as on list-based word articles; drifts in semantics and from fragments to o-sentences; present sitelen pona in Template:Figure or a new phrase infobox

And maybe mention the reputed connection to autistic social norms somewhere… Menasewi (talk) 11:25, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Following up. On the server, Tamzin has also argued that the current article is misleading: Most of the examples might not count as phatic (depending on the definition), and even with the clarifications that Toki Pona doesn't use many phatics, the article title creates an expectation that the suggested alternatives are the phatic expressions advertised. Xe suggested a reframing as "common phrases". These also seem like further arguments for full prose over lists of examples that might be misconstrued. Menasewi (talk) 10:59, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Split into Category:Social conventions. Hopefully the new articles are better focused and less misleading. Feel free to reopen this discussion if there are any lingering issues. Menasewi (talk) 13:59, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

I restored the page to the state it was in before being broken up. Phatic expressions aren't separate from social conventions, they **ARE** social conventions. We can rework the page title sure, and there's probably layout changes to make, but splitting this makes it far less useful for teaching. Keep related concepts in the same place, and learners benefit. We've been using the page for teaching purposes very successfully for a long time. I don't feel like "seems really bad for pedagogy" is accurate in practice - aside from lipamanka, I don't think any of the teachers on the server have raised any issue with it. jan Deni (talk) 20:36, 8 May 2024‎ (UTC)