The Discursive Construction of Dialogue from a Dialectic Perspective in Carmen Martín Gaite’s short story La trastienda de los ojos

Abstract

This article explores the possibility of drawing upon the concepts and methodology employed in the Theory of Relational Dialectics (TDR) to understand the interaction of discourses and to identify the meaning of dialogue discursively constructed in the short story La trastienda de los ojos of the Spanish author Carmen Martín Gaite. Based on a counterpoint analysis, a specific type of discourse analysis (Baxter, 2011), we have identified a series of sociocultural and interpersonal discourses on dialogue that compete with each other producing antagonistic dialectical tensions that result in the maintenance and strengthening of dominant discourses at the center of the chain of utterances, and the marginalization of alternative discourses on dialogue. The theory and methodology of relational dialectics is a novel approach in the study of the work of Martín Gaite as it introduces discourse analysis and interweaves theoretical concepts from both interpersonal communication and literature.

Keywords: dialogue, discourse analysis, relational dialectics