Our everyday understanding of the relationship between language and reality is
that there is a real world which language most of the time simply “names” or
designates; the only exceptions we are prepared to admit without much hesitation are
instances in which language is employed as a means for the production of creative
artefacts. In these cases we grant a “poetic licence” to the individual concerned, so as
to allow him to engage in the description of a fictional world. Disturbingly, sometimes
we find language that “does not” describe the reality we know in texts that “do not”
belong to the categories we would ordinarily grant with a “poetic licence”. Such a
category is historiography, and such a historian is Thucydides, whose use of language
has attracted attention all the way from antiquity down to the present time. This paper
attempts to explain this paradox with reference to the theory of language proposed by
systemic functional linguistics. According to this theory, language is a semiological
system that produces meaning under the constraints imposed by other wider and
socially determined semiological systems (the Context of Situation, the Context of
Culture, and Ideology). The paper examines how an understanding of these additional
strata of meaning can help us explain not only the choices that Thucydides makes in his
text, but also the reasons influencing his choices, as well as the motivations behind the
differing interpretations of ancient and modern scholars to his work.