How to be polite without saying 'please' in Ancient Greek? The role of δή in polite requests

(2022), Politeness in Ancient Greek and Latin, Luis Unceta Gomez & Lukasz Berger (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge Universiy Press, p. 77-102.

The article deals with the possible role of Greek particles in routine requests. Drawing on a corpus study, I show that δή plays a role in the mitigation of requests and can be considered as a polite marker. There are good and coherent signs that δή is used to signal a request as natural and obvious in the context, for routine interactions with a low level of imposition.

Remaniement de la communication présentée à Madrid le 26 juin 2017 dans le cadre du colloque Approaches to Greek and Latin im/politeness (L. Berger et L. Unceta Gomez)