After the second or third use, "I See You" would become as banal and meaningless as "hello."

true. Language has intrinsic meaning. "Hello" is not evocative of much, while "I see you" contains linguistic meaning that implies more than just a greeting.

So, I disagree with your statement. I believe that rote greetings and other social pleasantries have more function than you may think, and much of their function is linguistic in nature. Language reflects the character and social concepts of those who use it. "I see you" is a complete sentence, involving an active interaction between two individuals. It's all in there, linguistically speaking.

Both of those are phatic statements.

The way that you've described it, "I see you" serves the same primary function as "hello." Aside from the hipster appeal of using a non-western-conventional greeting, I am confident that the "active interaction between two individuals" would very quickly boil down to another empty social idiom.

It would take a fairly compelling argument to convince me otherwise.

I found that greeting to be interesting, so I posted something about it. I have no illusions that it could replace our current customary greetings. I just found the language interesting in a linguistic sense.

My response to a "Hey, how are you doing?" greeting is to provide some feedback to the person about how I'm doing. I reply to the question with a word or two that indicates my general state of being at the time. "Great!" "Lousy." "Meh." I don't launch into an explanation, but do offer some information in my reply to that.

Same thing when I exchange greetings with a Spanish-speaking friend. We converse in Spanish. If a question is part of the greeting, I respond with a brief answer to that question. Communication takes place. Is it phatic? That depends. Not always. Sometimes the greeting and How are you doing question evolves into a conversation. Sometimes not. It depends.

"Hello." conveys nothing and gets nothing in return other than "Hi." A conversation requires more effort, but is always welcomed.

Your OP was structured along the lines of "wouldn't it be nice if we did it that way?" which sort of came across as a wish that we all did it that way. I was responding to that aspect of the post.

That's lovely, but the question "Hey, how are you doing?" is still a phatic statement unless the speaker actually intends it as an invitation to expound upon your condition. Your response of "great," "lousy" or "meh" is also phatic unless you intend it to initiate a conversation about your state of being.

Even if you do intend it that way, and even if the initial speaker does sincerely ask the question, that the idiom itself is still phatic regardless of a few occasional anomalies.

Well, yeah. If an actual exchange of information occurs, then it's not phatic, and we can spend all day coming up with goofy exceptions (if a spy's code-word is "hello," then it's not a phatic statement because it conveys the information that he's the contact, etc.), but it's not about those few outliers. The statement in general, casual use is a phatic statement.

I am confident that "I see you" would be the same after the initial novetly (very quickly) wore off.

When telephones were new, Alexander Bell advocated 'ahoy' as the greeting to use when lifting the earpiece, Edison advocated 'hello'. Edison won and the greeting quickly spread out from the phones to become the greeting for live encounters as well. Myself, I wish we'd gone with 'ahoy' because it has some whimsey, or seems to since we don't use it constantly. Imagine the songs! Beatles 'Ahoy/Goodbye'. Lionel Ritchie with the simply titled 'Ahoy'.

seem to be pretty universal today. Although it is not in the etymology, I see the word "Hail" in there, on a linguistic level, so there's probably some ancient Sanskrit root involved. But, as Quinnox pointed out, it is a phatic expression, not meant to convey much meaning, and succeeding admirably in that. Linguistics is a funny study. Our choices of polite expressions seem to move away from conveying meaning and "hello" is a good example of that. That's why I think, "I see you" is a much more expressive greeting. It has linguistic content and some pretty important basic meaning.

Our greetings tend to be impersonal and neutral. I'm interested in the idea of making them more personal and having them convey some meaning. I think it's very unlikely that our standard greetings will change, though. But, it would be interesting to introduce new ways of greeting people that actually conveyed some intrinsic meaning on a linguistic level.

Just a musing for a Monday morning.

Point being that it was not really 'our choice' but a conflict between competitors in early telephony that lead to the use of 'hello'.

"Ahoy, I love you, won't you tell me your name" (The Doors)

"Ahoy Dolly!" (Louis Armstrong)

"Ahoy, It's Me" (Todd Rundgren)

"Ahoy, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me..." (Pink Floyd)

Big fun.

of someone who has had social anxiety disorder for decades, the phrase, "I see you" would be highly disturbing to me.

Because I spent many years trying to be invisible. Unnoticed. Unseen.

It actually took lots of work for me to realize that nobody is really paying that much attention to me at all. Or, at least, not as much as I feared they were.

Guess I'm just one of those really weird people...

Still, language usually doesn't take individual or personal issues into consideration all that much. That's especially true with stock expressions like greetings and so on.

it's all very subjective, which is what causes problems when people try to regulate what others should find offensive based on what they themselves find offensive.

I mean, how many arguments and debates have there been right here at DU over the years with regards to words/language that some find offensive but others don't.

Still, language is the best we have, aside from people being able to read each others' thoughts, and I'm not entirely sure that would work out any better. Might even be worse...

nt

were aware of the African greeting. I know that I've known about it for decades, so it's probably fairly commonly known. It's also linguistically interesting.

and the movie had a lot of other African references that translate across a broad spectrum of aboriginal peoples.

It was the only saving grace for that movie for me ... except for the graphics; that kept me watching it, too.