A Study Of The Ecological Thoughts In Walden From The Perspective Of Critical Discourse Analysis

With the constantly ecological change of the global environment, people haveincreasingly begun to pay attention to the research on the ecological thought inliterary works. Walden, as a concentration of Thoreau’s ecological wisdomand philosophical life, has been studied from the perspectives of the author’s Easternphilosophy idea, the relationship between man and nature, and the writing style bymany scholars since the publication, but the study of its ecological thoughts from theperspective of CDA has been rarely found.CDA is designed to discover the meaning hidden in language, includingthe relationship between language and power and language and ideology. WithHalliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar as the theoretical guidance andFairclouch’s Three-Dimensional Model as the analytical tool, this thesis tries to studythe ecological thought embodied in Walden.This thesis selects six sections from Walden as the research data. Fairclough’sthree-dimensional model of description, interpretation and explanation is used as theanalyzing tool, and the empirical research is applied as the analyzing method. Thefirst step is to describe the lexical classification, transitivity and modality of the textchosen from Walden. The second step is to interpret the selected sample’s content andthe relationships embodied in the chosen samples and the role of language. The laststep is to explain the social context and the power context reflected in Walden.Walden’s ecological thoughts are mainly studied from three aspects. After theanalysis of the process of lexical classification, it is found that in the processof describing nature, more commendatory words are used in Walden; however morederogatory words are used in the description of the human life. Throughthe analysis of lexical classification, it is found that the author advocates that thehuman beings should get rid of materialism’s slavery. Through the analysisof transitivity, it is found that the author thinks that the human beingsare plundering nature, but the human beings cannot conquer nature. In the analysis ofmodality of the text, it is found that the author advocates that the human beings shouldlive a self-sufficient life through working hard to realize one’s values. From the studyit is easily seen that the ecological thoughts Thoreau has expressed in Walden is thatthe human beings should respect and protect the nature. People should lead a simplelife by living in harmony with nature.