El análisis crítico del discurso y el Banquete de Platón: una aproximación del ACD y la filología clásica

The PhD thesis entitled The Critical Discourse Analysis and Plato's Symposium: an approach of CDA and classical philology carried out by Alejandro Rubio belongs to the PhD program of Gender Studies and Equality Policies. It focuses on discourse analysis in order to explore the different theoretical and methodological contributions of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and applicate it to classical Greek texts, in particular to Plato's philosophical dialogue. It has been compulsory to select a structural analytical frame that could be applied not only to current speeches, but also to speeches belonging to a historical and cultural context of Classical Antiquity. As a consequence, we have opened a research path linking CDA with Classical Philology. Our thesis develops one of the proposals of the CDA: the three-dimensional analytical model of N. Fairclough. We have applied this method to the discursive analysis of Plato's Symposium in its three complementary dimensions: 1. Critical discourse analysis as text or Textual Practice: This first dimension of the CDA of Plato's Symposium focuses on discourse as text, considered as "textual practice", i.e. the discourse as a piece of written or spoken language produced in a specific communicative context. In order to articulate the CDA in this dimension, we have created the main analytical tool, the "textual map of the clause", which will also be necessary to articulate the analysis in the other two dimensions, beginning from the intertextual and interdiscursive relations that the text establishes with other textual, discursive and social practices with which it dialogues in the context of a particular social and discursive order. 2. Critical discourse analysis as a Discursive practice: In this second dimension of critical discourse analysis, the dialogue of the Symposium is addressed as a "discursive practice", and the analysis focuses on both the socio-cognitive aspects of the literary production and on the aspects related to the processes of production, diffusion, reception and interpretation of the discourse. Therefore, it gives account of the relations between the dialogue in the Symposium and the discursive order (local and particular discursive genres), as well as the social order in which it is generated and through which articulates a particular discursive conceptualization of the reality. 3. Critical discourse analysis as a Social practice: In this third dimension of CDA, the dialogue of the Symposium is addressed as a "social practice", in terms of the situational and institutional framework of the discursive event. In this dimension of CDA it must be shown how the discourse is conditioned by the situational context where it has been originated within a certain social and discursive order, and also the way in which discourse, from the meanings that it mobilizes, contributes to the maintenance or undermining of particular ideological conceptions and ways of thinking, building the power relations that shape the social and discursive order in a given historical context. Consequently, the aim of this doctoral thesis has been to develop this analytical critical discursive model that conceives the discourse as an entity susceptible to be analyzed in these three dimensions and explore its possibilities of application to the Platonic dialogue of the Symposium. In spite of this division, the investigation shows that these three dimensions of the CDA do not constitute watertight and independent places, but permeable, dependent and in continuous interrelation. I truly believe that the result of this analysis has been very satisfactory and significant, since it has provided a holistic view of the discourse subject to research, which allows its rereading and updating. Moreover, it has also opened up new analytical and methodological pathways for the discursive analysis of the classical texts, combining the gender perspective and the ACD approach. All in all, they are some paths that can also be extrapolated to the critical discursive analysis of current discursive pieces.