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Diachronic analysis examines small talk in Old English, revealing types of greeting formulas.
The diachronic study of small talk and phatic units in English begins with the Old English (OE) period — from approximately AD 450 to 1100. The principal written source of this period is the epic poem Beowulf,¹ composed between the 8th and 11th centuries AD and preserved in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A.xv, c. 1000). As A.H. Jucker (2011)² notes, Old English greeting formulae fall into two main categories: attention-getting expressions and health-wishing formulae — both of which constitute the core of small talk.
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Madaminova et al. (2026) studied this question.
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