An Eco-discourse Analysis Of BBC Nature Documentaries From The Perspective Of Transitivity

With the increasing aggravation of global ecological crisis,"ecological turn" has emerged in the field of humanities and social sciences.Accordingly,linguists also begin to look at the world from the perspective of ecology,and ecolinguistics has been formed in this context.Hallidayan approach emphasizes the role of language in ecological issues and the impact of language on the ecological relationships,and Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL)lays stress on describing and analyzing linguistic facts in order to construct reality.Accordingly,the thesis attempts to conduct an eco-discourse analysis on two BBC nature documentaries,Blue Planet Ⅱand Planet Earth Ⅱ from the perspective of transitivity system,aiming at exploring the ecological thoughts behind the linguistic resources.Three questions will be addressed in this study:(1)How is transitivity system distributed in the commentaries of BBC nature documentaries?(2)How is transitivity system realized in the commentaries of BBC nature documentaries?(3)What kind of ecological thoughts are constructed through transitivity system in BBC nature documentaries?Transitivity system represents the experiential function in ideational function covering the content of the whole clause,including Process,Participant and Circumstance.It is used to model the world of people’s experience which is construed as semantic configuration and depict events and processes in the empirical world through clauses.Taking the transitivity system as theoretical framework,this study selects the commentaries of two BBC nature documentaries as texts,which have been popular with the audience in recent years,and constructs the BBC Nature Documentaries Corpus(BBCNDC)with the aid of UAM Corpus tool 3.3.Based on that,a combined quantitative and qualitative methodological approach has been used to analyze the distribution and realization of transitivity system in the corpus in order to explore the ecological thoughts constructed in BBC nature documentaries.Results have showed that in terms of the distribution of the whole transitivity components,the proportion of Process,Participant and Circumstance is different in transitivity system,among which Participant is the highest one.It shows that Participant in BBC nature documentaries plays a more significant role in construing ecological thoughts,although Process is the core element in transitivity system.Material process is most frequently used in BBCNDC,accounting for a larger proportion than other Processes combined,which indicates that Material process in BBC nature documentaries matters in the construction of ecological thoughts.The proportion of non-human organisms and physical participants is higher than that of human organisms and social participants,which shows that BBC nature documentaries give priority to non-human organisms and physical participants in ecosystem.With regard to the realization of transitivity system,Material processes mainly give a detailed account of a true life of non-human organisms and physical participants,as well as the interactions among humans,other organisms and physical environment in nature;Relational processes mainly describe attributes and characteristics of animals,plants and physical environment,as well as relationships among them;Mental processes mainly demonstrate conscious activities of living beings in nature and express people’s attitudes toward nature as well;Behavioral Processes are mainly used to describe living habits and behavior of beings in nature;Verbal processes mainly show speaking ability of non-human organisms;Existential processes largely show the audience what happens in nature and how living beings and physical participants exist in nature.As regards the ecological thoughts contained in BBCNDC,the thought of biocentric equality is reflected through activating,personifying and humanizing Participants in transitivity clauses;the thought of Self-realization is constructed by respecting for life,the intrinsic values of non-human organisms and physical participants as well as biodiversity via different Processes;a holistic worldview of man and nature harmonious coexistence is conveyed mainly through Material processes.The research conducts an eco-discourse analysis on BBC nature documentaries from the perspective of transitivity system.On the one hand,it is expected to provide a new path for research on eco-discourse analysis from the perspective of transitivity system.On the other hand,this study attempts to provide the audience with a new perspective to appreciate nature documentary and call on people to establish a correct ecological view,strengthen their sense of ecological responsibility,and hopefully provide suggestions for the future production of nature documentary.