This book investigates the linguistic and social conventions governing how ancient Greeks addressed one another in daily life, as reflected in their written literature. Eleanor Dickey, a specialist in classical languages, applies rigorous sociolinguistic methodology to a massive corpus of 11,891 vocative expressions extracted from 25 distinct authors. By analyzing these forms, she constructs a framework that bridges the gap between literary representation and the realities of spoken ancient Greek across several centuries.

Scholars and classicists recognize this work as a definitive reference for understanding the social dynamics of ancient Greek communication. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which serves as a foundational text for those studying the intersection of philology and social history.