A Study Of Ecological Discourse On Water Resources In The Economist From The Perspective Of Appraisal Theory

With the development of human society,the effects of human activity on environment and ecological systems have been tremendous and far-reaching.“For the past five hundred years,our sciences,social sciences and humanities alike have been committed to extending and celebrating the human domination of nature” Orr(1992:145).In the twenty-first century,humanity is facing overarching ecological challenges,such as biodiversity loss,food security,climate change,water depletion,energy security,chemical contamination,alienation from nature and the social justice questions that both contribute to and arise from these issues(Stibbe,2015: 14).Confronted with such situation,people's awareness of the ecological embedding of humans and human societies has risen to the level of urgent and immediate concern,against which there has been an ‘ecological turn' in humanities and social science subjects.As a result,the object of study is no longer seen in isolation,but as an inextricable and integral part of a larger physical and living world.For example,ecolinguistics evolves to be concerned with the relationship of language to its biological and physical environment.Numerous studies have been conducted on ecological discourse from different approaches and on all kinds of discourse with ecological consideration.Water is one of the most significant resources on Earth,playing a vital role in all forms of life.In recent years,water scarcity and water pollution are influencing an increasing number of people.Meanwhile,water-related conflicts are constantly increasing.Climate change and population growth are making the world's water woes more urgent.But few studies are on ecological discourse about water,which deserves much attention from the public.Studies on ecological discourse on water can help people better understand water problems and be prepared to deal with them.Appraisal Theory is developed by Martin as an extension of interpersonal meaning in systemic functional linguistics(SFL).Appraisal itself is categorized as three interacting domains—attitude,engagement and graduation.Attitude deals withsuch feelings as our emotional reactions,judgments of behavior and evaluation of things.Engagement is concerned with sourcing attitudes and the play of voices around opinions in discourse.Graduation deals with grading phenomenon to amplify feelings and blur categories(Martin & White,2008: 35).Appraisal system provides resources for constructing addressers' emotional feelings towards people and things around,and building on a certain proposition dialogistic alternatives for addressees.Thus,conducting an analysis on ecological discourse from the perspective of appraisal theory can reveal the writer's feelings to people and things involved in the discourse and further reveal the ideologies embedded in the discourse.This study employs Appraisal Theory as its framework to conduct discourse analysis on ecological discourse in relation to water resources.The data selected is a special report on water in The Economist,which includes seven texts: Water,Rivers and lakes,Water conflicts,Groundwater,Desalination,Saving water,and Conclusion.The study first annotates attitude resources,engagement resources and graduation resources in the seven texts of the special report with the help of UAM Corpus Tool3.3.The proportion of appraisal resources annotated can be attained in the tool.The analysis presents the distribution and employment of appraisal resources in the special report,the functions of the appraisal resources in the special report,followed by discussions of the ideologies conveyed through the employment of appraisal resources.This study aims to answer the following three research questions:1.How are appraisal resources distributed and employed in the special report?2.What are the functions of the appraisal resources employed in the special report?3.What ideologies are conveyed through the employment of appraisal resources in the special report?It's found that attitude resources are the least employed,and the proportion of engagement resources and graduation resources are similar in the special report.Of all the appraisal resources in the special report,the proportion of attitude resources is14.97%,engagement resources 42.82%,and graduation resources 42.14%.In terms of attitude resources,affect accounts for 15.77%,judgement accounts for 14.86%,andappreciation accounts for 69.37%.Positive attitude resources have the proportion of33.33%,negative 53.60%,and ambiguous 13.06%.In terms of engagement resources,mono-glossic accounts for 33.07%,and hetero-glossic accounts for 66.93%.In terms of graduation resources,the proportion of force and focus are 92.00% and 8.00%respectively.In the special report,the writer employed appraisal resources to present the present and predicted status of water problems around the world,the resulting consequences,and the solutions to solve them.In terms of the functions of the appraisal resources,the employment of the appraisal resources helps to better convey what the writer wants and attract the readers' attention to the worlds' water problems.In the special report,the appraisal resources employed function to reveal the status of the world's water problems,indicate solutions to the world's water woes,and imply the relationship between ecological discourse and society.Through the analysis of the appraisal resources in the special report,it can be found that they convey three ideologies,that is,opposing over-exploitation of water resources;promoting an overall decrease in water consumption;encouraging redistribution of water resources.These ideologies can help people have a right understanding on the serious consequences of over-exploitation of water resources and thus avoid such behavior,value the lives and wellbeing of all humans around the world,and encourage society as a whole to develop ecological sustainability.The study falls into a discourse analysis of ecological discourse on water from the perspective of Appraisal Theory.The study focuses on the analysis of the distribution and employment of appraisal resources in the special report,with discussions of the functions of the appraisal resources in the special report and the ideologies conveyed.Therefore,this study,to some extent,enriches the study on ecological discourse at home.At the same time,this study helps to better understand the water problems around the world and how to solve them.This study has its own limitations.Firstly,the data selected for this study is not big enough.Further study can choose more discourse on water from other media to analyse the feature of the employment of appraisal resources or to form a contrastivestudy.Secondly,the study only adopts Appraisal Theory as its framework,which may not lead to a comprehensive analysis.Thus,further study can develop a new analysis from different perspectives under the guidance of Appraisal Theory and other philosophies.