There are many things we say in our daily language that are either pointless or contradictory. This article talks about "but-head" sentence prefixes. Another

There are many things we say in our daily language that are either pointless or contradictory. This article talks about "but-head" sentence prefixes. Another example would be disingenuous greetings, such as asking "how's life?", "how's your day been?", etc, even though we don't really care. Proof that we don't care: The way people get uncomfortable when someone actually honestly answers "actually my day's been terrible because of A, B, C ...". This article raises some interesting points that I've thought of myself sometimes. Before reading this article, I had made the assumption that it was just protocol. I assumed that there was something ... missing in the English language: Often times, when we use such set expressions, we're actually trying to convey some sort of emotion rather than the actual message of the words. "Hey how's it going" is actually suppose to mean "I am acknowledging your presense, and may or may not wish to engage in conversation with you unless your mood complements mine...". After reading this article, I can't help but find myself agreeing with the author. A lot of these are nothing but self-serving converstation fillers. Unfortunately, I can't think of any alternatives besides downright bluntness ...