Abstract
This article explores variation in the language of male characters in the plays of the Athenian playwright Aristophanes, using Thesmophoriazusae and Frogs as in-depth case studies. Studies of modern languages have shown that men’s linguistic practices can be just as marked for gender as women’s, and the data from these plays bears this out. Using past work on ‘female speech’ as a starting point, this article explores the incidence of gendered markers in male characters’ speech, and shows that some of these features characterise not just gender but the intersection of different aspects of identity including gender, social class and sexuality. These features include particular oaths, obscenities, certain uses of the particle ge, hedging and politeness strategies. The article shows that a lack of male-associated speech markers is enough to characterise a male Greek speaker as ‘unmanly’, without the addition of female-associated speech markers.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Olga Tribulato, James Clackson, Lyndsay Coo, John Gallagher and Patrick Clibbens for their comments on versions of this article, and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive suggestions for further improvements.This research was conducted at the University of Cambridge.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
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- The sociolinguistics of gender, social status and masculinity in Aristophanes
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- Trilingualism in early modern Norwich
- Evidentiality in Early Modern English Medical Treatises (1500–1700)
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- The sociolinguistics of gender, social status and masculinity in Aristophanes
- A note on the relationship between Scandinavian and Low German
- Trilingualism in early modern Norwich
- Evidentiality in Early Modern English Medical Treatises (1500–1700)
- Book Reviews
- Spolsky, Bernard: The Languages of the Jews. A Sociolinguistic History
- Havinga, Anna & Nils Langer: Invisible Languages in the Nineteenth Century
- Jones, Mari C.: Variation and Change in Mainland and Insular Norman. A Study of Superstrate Influence
- Doyle, Aidan: A History of the Irish Language. From the Norman Invasion to Independence
- Bös, Birte & Lucia Kornexl: Changing Genre Conventions in Historical English News Discourse