La lengua de los personajes. Caracterización lingüística en la obra de Eurípides a partir de los Heraclidas

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to determine how Euripidean characters are characterised through their language with respect to one another. Heraclidae is taken as a starting point. The thesis is divided into five chapters with an abstract and concluding remarks in English, an index locorum and a list of figures. Chapter 1 deals with the much-discussed question of what characterisation implies and how it can be approached. Chapter 2 addresses the method, whose aim is to establish guidelines for approaching linguistic characterisation in a dramatic corpus. The potentially relevant features for the study of linguistic characterisation have been selected under the framework of Speech Act Theory, Conversation Analysis, and especially, Politeness Theory, thus forming the baselines of a threefold approach. Chapter 3 examines the socio-pragmatic factors pertaining to the use of forms of address with a focus on the forms of address at the right periphery, namely, at the end of the clause. The last two chapters are about two speech acts, namely approval and supplication. Chapter 4 examines the distribution of approval formulae, which can be considered as taxemic markers. Chapter 5 offers an analysis of how im/politeness strategies work with regard to the role played by the characters involved in a number of suppliant scenes.