Forms of the directive speech act: evidence from early Ptolemaic papyri

In early Hellenistic Greek, a wider range of strategies was availablethan in the Classical period to express directive speech acts, in which the addressertypically tries to induce the addressee to take a particular action.During this period, besides imperatives, other patterns – more focused on thepragmatic context – become routine, such as performative utterances, by whichthe addresser makes the interaction dynamics of the speech act explicit, as wellas indirect implicatures, by which its illocutionary force is softened. Morphosyntacticvariation also contributes to modulating the speech act. Finally, regularitiesin the phrasing, related to both the author’s profile and the context of use(also in terms of epistolary type), emerge.