Chapter 3 - How to Be Polite without Saying ‘Please’ in Classical Greek?

Summary

Ancient Greek does not have a term equivalent to ‘please’ and the bare imperative is used for requests. The understanding of Ancient Greek can benefit from a comparison with some modern languages where the equivalent to ‘please’ is either more restricted in use (Modern Greek) or absent (Danish): these two languages have different strategies (diminutives for Modern Greek, particles for Danish) in the case of routine interactions where the aim is to signal to the interlocutor that the request is expected in the context.

The aim of the chapter is to evaluate the role of the particle δή in such a function of de-dramatization and trivialization of the potentially threatening speech act, through a corpus study in dialogical texts of the classical period (comedies of Aristophanes, philosophical dialogues of Plato). The study shows that this post-positive particle can function as a positive politeness marker (in Brown and Levinson’s sense), to signal a weakly threatening or expected request in the context.