An Analysis Of Silent Spring From The Perspective Of Green Grammar

In the 1960 s,the book Silent Spring written by Rachel Carson is the first discourse concerned with the modern environmental movement.The “green grammar” thoughts contained in the language of this book give special warnings to people around the world.And it has raised the world's attention of the hazards on human health and the environment posed by indiscriminate use of pesticides,calling for more people not to ignore environmental issues.“Green grammar” is a lexical-grammatical expression that no longer traditionally focuses on language rules but fully embodies such modern ecological ethics of the harmony and coexistence between human and nature and all things being equal.It manifests a kind of green philosophy.It not only means to protect the ecological environment through linguistic methods but also to make a critical analysis of non-ecological ideologies and grammatical expressions in the language system.It is not hard to observe that the previous studies on Silent Spring abroad and at home are mainly in literary studies which focus on the perspective of eco-feminism,eco-criticism,environmental philosophy,and the environmental protection thought.Through integrating the theory of Halliday's transitivity system and Fairclough's three-dimensional analytical model,selecting parts of language materials from Silent Spring,and starting from the perspective of language itself,this thesis makes a study on the transitivity features of Silent Spring from three dimensions of description,interpretation and explanation within the paradigm of eco-critical discourse analysis.It explores the “green grammar” thoughts contained in Silent Spring and expounds the relationship between language,nature and society.The green grammar features of Silent Spring are indicated in the following three aspects:Firstly,at the description stage,the transitivity features of Silent Spring are that material process clause and relational process clause play a major role respectively with the proportion of 46.98 percent and 31.88 percent.The remained three process clauses-mental process clause,verbal process clause,and existential process clause only each take up 9.06,6.38,and 5.70 percent respectively.And there is no behavioral process clause.This just indicates that the view and conclusion of Silent Spring are objective.It is owing to the writer who makes a list of large amounts of objective scientific data through the language description of material process to reveal the destruction of insecticides.Secondly,at the interpretation stage,material process,relational process,mental process,verbal process,and existential process in Silent Spring all contain the thoughts of green grammar in different degrees.In these transitive processes,some of the discourse construction in Silent Spring applies language skillfully.For instance,nominalizations that conceal the agents and patients of actions to shift human responsibilities are applied in material process clauses,relational process clauses and verbal process clauses.Large amount of non-human things as actors are applied in material process clauses,mental process clauses and existential process clauses.And some reciprocal words are applied in material process clauses.These green grammars are all against the non-ecological grammatical features,like anthropocentrism,growthism and classism,to build the coexistence of human and nonhuman so as to achieve the harmony between human and nature.Thirdly,at the explanation stage,a special indication of Silent Spring is that there is a specific internal relationship between language and society.This relationship suggests that the unintentional discourse produced with the focus of anthropocentrism by speakers usually construct the speakers' actions.On one hand,language users are not aware that the discourses they construct are against ecology and ecological harmony.On the other hand,with the awaking of human beings' ecological consciousness,such unintentional discourse construction will change intentionally which can prompt language users to make a choice of the language purposely.They can construct and choose language that is beneficial for the harmony of ecology,building a harmonious ecological environment positively.One significant social function of such internal relationship revealed by green grammar contained in Silent Spring is to promote human beings to make efforts in environmental protection.It also prompts human to recognize that language and reality is constantly associated,warns mankind to take the relationship between human beings and the natural world seriously,and alerts human beings to treat nature with a humble attitude and live in harmony with nature.All in all,the green grammar contained in Silent Spring will promote human beings to choose language use consciously,and further play a positive role in environmental issues through language.