Developments in Politeness from Aristophanes to Menander and Beyond

My aim is to describe developments in the polite language of late fifth century BCE Athens, when Aristophanes wrote, to the time when Menander was active (early third century BCE). By ‘polite language,’ I mean those expressions, routines, and scripts by which a speaker expresses consideration for the other. They are an ubiquitous part of our own daily language use. Polite expressions (in English, ‘please’; ‘can you + verb’); routines (for instance, facilitating closure to a conversation); and scripts (enabling predictable structure to even the most informal talk); these provide quarry for students of politeness because they demonstrate how people