| Ecological problems and environmental protection have attracted much attention worldwide,and have become one of the hot topics in the academic community.The purpose of Ecological Discourse Analysis(EDA for short)is to explore the relationship and interaction between language and ecology and reveal the influence of language on various ecological relationships.At present,Ecological Linguistics(EL for short)mainly has two research paths to follow.The first one is the so-called Haugenian Dogma,the hypothesis of which is that language environment is the guarantee for language development and protection.The second one is Hallidayan Dogma,whose basic tenet is that language is not a passive reflection of reality and human beings use language to reflect reality and construct the world.This thesis follows Hallidayan Dogma,and mainly uses the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL for short)and employs discourse analysis to explore the specific relationship between language and environment.In the light of SFL,language is the product of human social activities.It is believed that an application of the theory of SFL can make EDA more scientific and objective.The study of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland(Alice for short)is well-documented.Nevertheless,few are like us using a corpus method to analyze the ecological thoughts contained in Alice from the perspective of SFL.Specifically,in this thesis,we make a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the expression of ecological thoughts in Alice in the light of SFL with the help of the corpus of Preschoolers and Teenagers-Oriented Texts in English(PATTIE corpus for short).The following three points are made in the thesis.Firstly,based on the analysis of the transitivity system,we reveal the motivation for the choice of language forms in Alice.As the participants in behavioural process and mental process,Behavers and Sensers are usually human beings,and then if there are Behavers or Sensers in Alice are nonhuman creatures,Lewis Carroll's ecological thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” can be revealed in a straightforward manner.Besides,we classify all the predicates in PATTIE corpus that can realize behavioural process and mental process,and find that 32 behavioural processes have human beings as the Behavers,in contrast with 45 behavioural processes with nonhuman beings as the Behavers.On the other hand,there are 265 mental processes with human beings as their Sensers in contrast with 331 mental processes with nonhuman beings as their Sensers.Nonhuman beings,however,are treated in Alice as Behavers and Sensers,that is,nonhuman beings are regarded as creatures having the same characteristics in behaving and sensing as human beings.This also indicates that Lewis Carroll expresses his ecological thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” through the choice of transitivity system.Secondly,based on the analysis of the appraisal system,we reveal how Lewis Carroll expresses his attitude towards the relationship between humankind and nature in the form of language.We find that in Alice,58.47% of the evaluative adjectives used to express attitudes are used by human beings and 41.53% of the evaluative adjectives used to express attitudes are used by animals.So,it shows that Carroll regards both human beings and animals as subjects of evaluation.He endows animals with the ability to make evaluations and express their attitudes like human beings do.In other words,Carroll expresses his ecological thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” through the choice of appraisal system.Finally,based on an analysis of the thematic structure,we can also uncover the thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” embodied in Alice.According to statistics,Alice does not have human beings as the only kind of theme used.Rather,about 35% of the themes presented are nonhuman beings.From this,it can be seen that Lewis Carroll does not regard mankind as the dominating species of all the things in the world,still less that he takes the extremist view of human supremacy.In short,Lewis Carroll expresses his ecological thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” through thematic choice.To sum up,Lewis Carroll expresses his ecological thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” through specific choices of transitivity system,appraisal system and thematic structure,which is related to the use of personification.And the use of personification in Alice is pervasive,systematic and dynamic.Undeniably,there are also cases where nonpersonification of animals is employed in Alice.Therefore,we have made a qualitative EDA of non-personification of animals in Alice.First of all,Lewis Carroll does not personify all the animals in Wonderland at the beginning,but as Alice's cognition of animals matures,personification is widely used.On the one hand,the dynamic use of personification conforms to the general cognitive process of human beings.On the other hand,it implies that the formation and development of ecological thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” must depend on the gradual deepening of human understanding of nature.Secondly,Lewis Carroll does not personify all the different kinds of animals in the real world mentioned by Alice simultaneously.Specifically,one particular type of animal(i.e.cats)in the real world is personified,while another particular type of animal(i.e.dogs)in the real world is not personified.This,on the one hand,also conforms to the cognitive rule of human beings;on the other hand,it implies that the ecological thoughts of “harmony” and “equality” in the real world have not been completely formed yet.Lewis Carroll's ecological thoughts expressed in Alice cannot be denied simply in virtue of the fact that personification is not applied consistently in Alice.Non-personified reference to certain nonhuman beings in some cases is motivated. |
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