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

The Role of δή in Polite Requests*

from Part II - The Expression of Im/Politeness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2022

Luis Unceta Gómez
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Łukasz Berger
Affiliation:
University of Adam Mickiewicz, Poland
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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.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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