A Discourse Analysis On Chinese Environmental News Reports From The Perspective Of Ecolinguistics

As an emerging branch of linguistics,eco-linguistics is a research frontier in recent years.With the advancement of society and the spread of ecological awareness,the relationship between language and environment has received more and more attention.However,the existing researches on ecological discourse analysis mostly adopt the research path of Critical Discourse Analysis or the systematic functional linguistics.Ecological discourse analysis does not have its own research method yet.Based on the perspective of eco-linguistics,this study selects 40 news reports with the highest relevance to air pollution in Xinhua net(English version).This study integrates the linguistic ecological ethic of Pan Shisong and the ecological discourse analysis of He Wei to explore the(non-)ecological factors and environmental discourse types of Chinese air pollution news reports in Xinhua net by analyzing the participant figurations,the sense of place,and the appropriateness of stylistic elements.The main findings are as follows:(1)At the basic transitivity system level,air pollution news reports mainly contain material processes,mental processes,and verbal processes,which guarantee the objectivity,reliability,facticity,and warning function of news reports respectively.At the ecological transitivity system level,geographical location participants bear the behavior of social roles by nominating.The configuration methods of the air pollution news report erase the proactive participant roles of humans and put the non-human organism as the main actors.The ecological discourse type of news reports is not an environmentally friendly discourse from micro ecolinguistic perspective.(2)By analyzing ?the ecological sense of place? of air pollution news reports,this study finds that,on the whole,the discourse fails to consider non-human living creatures within the morality scope.Among human participant roles,farmers and scientists are placed on the opposite side and participants‘ behaviors are overemphasized.In terms of details,although the typical ecological destructive sense of place types does exist in the discourses,most of the discourses are in the complex collocations of emotional connections,cognitive experiences,and intentional behaviors.Hence the air pollution news reports on the Xinhua net(English version)are in the continuum of ecological ambivalent discourse and ecological destructive discourse at this stage.(3)The situation of the linguistic ecological ethic of air pollution news reports could be concluded by analyzing the genre appropriateness from four aspects.First of all,at the level of context elements,the ecological niche of non-human organisms is absent and anthropocentrism is obvious with the dislocated human ecological niche.Besides,the tenor and the mode of the discourses are not appropriate.From this perspective,the appropriateness of the contextual elements is not suitable.Secondly,at the media level,air pollution news reports use only plain text to explain the facts.The discourse ecological niche here is absent.Finally,at the level of method and functional type,the immediacy and interactivity between discourse and readers are impaired,which imply that the appropriateness degree of these two elements is not optimistic either.The genre appropriateness of the whole discourses is weak,which means that air pollution news reports violate the linguistic ecological ethic.From the macroscopic perspective,the ecological type of the discourse belongs to the ecological ambivalent discourse.In the face of ecological ambivalent discourse,the public needs to learn how to tell(non-)ecological factors.Journalists should try to guide such discourses to environmentally friendly discourse with their professional skills.This study reveals the ecological discourses type of air pollution news reports is different from their discourse type.It also stresses the importance of the language used in the ecological environment and enhances people‘s ecological awareness in daily behaviors.It also provides a reference for the future ecological discourse analysis in the field of ecological linguistics.