Analysis Of Eco-discourse In BBC Nature Documentaries Seven Worlds,One Planet From The Perspective Of Transitivity System

In today’s society,the rapid development of technology has brought with it increasingly serious ecological problems.People have realized that they cannot just take from nature,but should seek to live in harmony with it.It is in this context that ecology has emerged.Ecolinguistics is an interdisciplinary subject that focuses on the impact of language use on humans,the environment and other living things.Systemic functional linguistics belongs to theoretical linguistics,which aims to provide a theoretical framework for discourse analysis.Thus,systemic functional linguistics,as a tool for analyzing discourse,provides a strong theoretical basis for ecological discourse analysis.Transitivity is a key concept in systemic functional linguistics,which is a systematic network of the types of processes involving the representation of small sentences and the participants and environmental components.There are three components of transitivity:participants,process and circumstance.As a mass media,the BBC nature documentary is not only a true and objective record of the current situation,but also has the social responsibility of spreading knowledge and guiding viewers’ thinking,and therefore has certain research value and significance.This thesis attempts to analyze the BBC nature documentary Seven Worlds,One Planet qualitatively and quantitatively within the framework of the system of transitivity,with the help of the corpus tool UAM Corpus Tool 3.3.The study focuses on the following three questions:i.How is the transitivity system distributed in the BBC nature documentary Seven Worlds,One Planet?ii.How is the ecological discourse in the BBC nature documentary Seven Worlds,One Planet realized through transitivity system?iii.What kind of ecological thoughts is constructed in the BBC documentary Seven Worlds,One Planet through the transitivity system?The study has found that:firstly,among the transitivity system,the largest proportion is participants,followed by processes,and the lowest proportion is circumstance.Of the six processes,material processes make up the most significant proportion,followed by relational processes,mental processes,behavioral processes,and existential processes.Verbal Processe accout for the least.There are more human participants than animal participants,and location accounts for the most significant proportion of the circumstance.Secondly,for the realization ofthe transitivity system,the material processes mainly present the processes of animal foraging,courtship,mating,and reproduction;the relational processes mainly describe the characteristics of animals;the psychological processes mainly show the way animals recognize each other and the way humans perceive themselves as destroying nature;the behavioral process mainly describe the physiological processes of animals;and the existential processes objectivey describe the phenomena of nature.The verbal process appears least frequently and is used for the communication between humans or animals.For participants,the documentary is mainly realized through humans and animals which implies a connection between humans and the creatures of nature.Also,it implies that as ecological builders,humans should take responsibility for protecting wildlife.For the environment,they are mainly used to describe the habits and locations of the animals.Thirdly,this study analyzes different ecological discourse in process,participants,and circumstance to arrive at four ecological thoughts:living,harmonious ecological place view,harmonious co-existence,and well-being.