Speech as a Personality Symbol: The Case of Achilles

Abstract

Individual speech is a minimal system of language use and variation and yet, despite its theoretical interest, has been neglected; syntax (as against phonology) has been egregiously ignored. This article, stimulated by the work of Adam Parry and of Sapir, partly solves a thorny problem over two millennia old. Using total samples of Achilles and his interlocutors, the authors establish nine categories of discriminatory variables in rhetoric, discourse, and syntax; ‘expressive rhetoric’, asyndeton, and particles are particularly revealing. The speech of Achilles is related to the personality which it symbolizes. Our conclusions concern three major open questions in the study of individual variation.

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