The Languages of Aristophanes - Aspects of Linguistic Variation in Classical Attic Greek (Hardcover, New)

The play with linguistic styles constitutes an important ingredient of Aristophanic humour. Andreas Willi uses the stylistic diversity as a source to reconstruct the 'real' styles upon which Aristophanes based his text. Most of these 'real' styles would otherwise be lost because they are not represented in serious literature. For instance, it is possible to distinguish between male and female Attic, to ask whether classical Athenian culture knew technical languages in the modern sense, and to look at what ancient people found funny about the broken language of foreigners.