SOURCE: Jones, Frederick. “Naming in Pliny's Letters.” Symbolae Osleonses 66 (1991): 147-70.

In the following essay, Jones studies Pliny's Letters as a means of gaining insight into the social conditions and protocols under which Latin name forms were used.

Language inevitably makes and enacts presuppositions about the social conditions under which communication takes place. Thus Cicero distinguished private and various kinds of public discourse (ad Famm. 9.21; 15.21), Quintilian distinguished persuasive functions (12.10.59), and writing and speaking (12.10.49f), and stressed the importance of gauging the audience and the circumstances (4.1.52; cf. also [Quint.] Decl. Min. 316.2 with Winterbottom ad loc.), attributing an intelligent formulation to Cicero: eius (= iudicis) vultus saepe ipse rector est dicentis (12.10.56). Vocabulary, syntax, thematic material, stylistic ornamentation provide some of the differentia involved; another way of looking at the differences is to consider utterances in the light of their interactive value, interactive, that is, between speaker and hearer.¹ One aspect of this...