Esther's Strategies of Becoming an עבד משׂכיל

The study of politeness has become a major topic of pragmatics and sociolinguistics. Although research into politeness strategies has been done in Classical Biblical Hebrew, very little work has focused exclusively on Late Biblical Hebrew. This paper discusses three such strategies, identifiable in the book of Esther: the use of vocatives and titles, the substitution of third person forms for those of the second and first person (including a brief discussion on the indexing of social relationships through pronominal changes), and the employment of the indefinite or unspecified agent in passive and passive-like constructions. The discussion is then used to formulate some broader conclusions concerning post-exilic Hebrew in general and the language of Esther in particular.