[ExI] You know what?

[Damien Broderick]

At 07:14 PM 1/23/2008 +0100, Stefano Vaj wrote:

>An alternative implication might be "You know what I mean,
>so I would not really need to elaborate this point any further, but I
>am doing it anyway".

It's not just a filler, it's a phatic act# eliciting agreement, or at 
least openness to persuasion. A British don might say equivalently 
"don't you think?" or "wouldn't you say?" or "Is it not the case 
that?" or "I think that we can agree that..." A lawyer might say (but 
this is not quite equivalent) "I put it to you that...".

And because we're a social species that's so mutually attuned and 
suggestible that we all start yawning when someone in the group does, 
that speech act blurs from its phatic status into the 
*performative*--an item of utterance that *enacts* or enforces what 
it declares.##

Damien Broderick

#"a phatic expression is one whose only function is to perform a social task"
##"Relating to or being an utterance that performs an act or creates 
a state of affairs by the fact of its being uttered under appropriate 
or conventional circumstances, as a justice of the peace uttering `I 
now pronounce you husband and wife' at a wedding ceremony, thus 
creating a legal union, or as one uttering `I promise,' thus 
performing the act of promising."