I remembered the phrase - 'phatic expressions.' "In phatic expressions, speech acts are not communicative, since no content is communicated. According to anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, apparently "purposeless" speech acts—polite small talk, like "how are you?" or "have a nice day"—even though their content may be trivial or irrelevant to the situation, perform the important function of establishing, maintaining, and managing bonds of sociality between participants."