This chapter examines friendship terms (e.g. phile, beltiste, daimonie) in Plato in the light of Brown and Levinson’s face-threat theory of politeness. It argues that every friendship term in Plato is polite redress for a specific face-threatening act, and aims to explain not only their general significance but also why they occur exactly when they do. The chapter examines Phaedrus in detail in order to show how friendship terms are associated with particular face-threatening acts, and supports the argument with a selection of passages from other dialogues. About 240 out of the 457 friendship terms in the corpus are either discussed in detail or explicitly linked to a specific face-threatening act, and the remaining examples should be readily intelligible in the light of this. Friendship terms are formally polite, in keeping with Socrates’ persona as represented in the dialogues, but also serve to emphasize face-threatening acts such as criticism and refutation. It is notable that there are no friendship terms in dialogues, or sections of dialogues, where overt face threat is avoided (e.g. the conversation with Gorgias in Gorgias).

The use of the present tense to refer to the past in summary narrative, that is, narrative passages where small stretches of discourse time cover large stretches of story time, depends upon the idea that the designated events are currently accessible through the medium of the discourse. The present tense serves to highlight the importance of the designated events for the development of the discourse. This diegetic use of the present has a predilection for certain attention-management strategies, such as cataphoric reference and complex clause structure, which puts the main clause event in focus within the wider discourse context. More specifically, the diegetic present has two main functions: marking changes in the narrative dynamic, and marking changes in the status of referents.

The use of the present tense to refer to the past in scenic narrative, that is, narrative passages where discourse time comes close to story time, depends on the pretense that the past events are being currently re-enacted. This pretense is facilitated by a mimetic style of narrating: the narrative is construed in such a way that the activity of processing the narrative is similar to the processing of actual experience. This is achieved in three ways. First, by narrating events that are concrete and appeal to our sensorimotor faculties. Second, by depicting the narrative events through gesture, direct speech representation, sound symbolism, and other means. Third, by using simple grammar to mimic the immediacy of actual experience. Moreover, the present tense is more likely to be used when the narrated events are high in communicative dynamism, which means that they are particularly newsworthy or important for the development of the discourse.

In non-narrative contexts, the use of the present to refer to past events is supported by the idea that these events are currently accessible through some kind of record. In references to mythological events, the implied record is mythographical or iconographical. In references to historical events, the implied record is chronographical, such as the Parian Marble. In references to transactions in the legal and business spheres, the implied record is a document from the corresponding sphere, such as a sales contract. The implication conveyed by the construal of the designated past event as being 'on record' is that this event is well-documented and of some importance in recorded history.

The introduction discusses the relationship between grammatical tense and the conceptualisation of time. It then presents an overview of the argument of each of the book's chapters. A discussion follows of aspects of Mental Spaces Theory, with special attention paid to the concepts of the 'ground' and of 'representation'. Points of the Classical Greek tense and aspect system are discussed.

In this study, I have put forward a cognitive account of tense-switching, that is, an account that is based on the presupposition that the meaning behind the variation between the past and present tenses lies in the particular conceptual structure evoked by each. As I discussed in Chapter 1, Section 1.2, many scholars have thought that the flexibility of use of the present tense forces the linguist to drop the entire assumption that the present tense designates present time reference. For example, Fludernik (1991: 386) argued that ‘specific uses of the present tense (such as the historical present tense) cannot be explained as “signifying present relevance”, “lifting past events into the present of the speaker’s reporting” and the like’. I hope to have made a convincing argument that not only is it theoretically possible to explain the use of the present tense to refer to the past in terms of present time reference but that such an approach yields a deeper understanding of the phenomenon than one that focuses purely on functional aspects and ignores the conceptual dimension.