The sense of ksénos in Ancient Greek: Prototypical schematicity and blending in a complex praxis

Abstract

The present work looks at the term ksénos as an access point to the enacted model of hospitality—ksenía—in ancient Greece. It deduces the onomasiological and semasiological spread of the term across the model’s participants, namely GUEST, STRANGER but also HOST, into a schematic prototypical core within a complex and dynamic conceptual integration model. Along the spatial continuum of DISTANCE-APPROACHING-PROXIMITY, the analysis looks into APPROACHING as an emergent space, where GIFT-EXCHANGE is interpreted as a process of mental-space shift on the part of a stable SELF confronting the incoming OTHER. POSSESSIONS EXCHANGE conceptualised as non-commodifiable and non-alienable to the giver activates the metaphorical relation HAVE as BE. Thus, the abrupt confrontation is accommodated as an ad hoc partial substitutability of each participant’s identity by the identity of the other. Some Proto-Indo-European etymologies proposed in literature for the term are reviewed, and their compatibility with the present analysis is evaluated.