“Tempted,” as he put it, by the “demon of terminological invention,” Malinowski first coined the term “phatic” as one half of a two‐word compound, “phatic communion.” Since Malinowski, “phatic” has often been used to imply a semiotic equation where mere communicative contact automatically produces positive social relations among those communicating. This article explores a genre of “trash talk” on the pétanque gambling courts of Luang Prabang, Laos to challenge this assumption and clarify multiple senses of “phaticity.” With close attention to talk used not for positive communion but for distraction, I argue that communicative contact as a technical phenomenon must be separated from communicative contact as a sign of other kinds of meaning.