This book focuses on Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian writer of the Greek language in the second century CE, and his engagement with contemporary debates regarding the form and register of language best suited to composing Greek literature in the Roman Empire. Many authors of the period advocated or practised writing in a revived version of Attic Greek, the dialect used in classical Athenian rhetoric, philosophy and drama of the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. However, this book argues that Lucian distinguished himself from other writers, including those who also commented extensively on the linguistic dimensions of classical reception, through his self-aware, humorous approach to sociolinguistics.

As Stifler demonstrates, the focal point of much of Lucian's satire is at the intersection of, on the one hand, vocabulary, syntax and usage, and on the other hand, cultural, racial and political identity – a space in which other authors also operate but which they seldom acknowledge. In Stifler's view, a crucial component of Lucian's satire is in fact sociolinguistic, constituting a complex but ultimately coherent ideology of Atticism expressed through multiple perspectives, or personae, and comprising a sophisticated commentary on the sociolinguistic imaginaries of Lucian's period. The result is Lucian's approach to integrating and negotiating his authorial persona, as a non-Greek practising Greek sophism, by decoupling linguistic expertise from ethnic identity.