An Appraisal-Based Study On The Ecological Thought In Casual Expressions Of Idle Feeling

Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling is the masterpiece of Li Yu,a versatile poet,dramatist,essayist,and aesthetician in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.As the first encyclopedia of ancient Chinese life,this book encapsulates Li Yu's extensive experiences in arts of living and is full of ecological philosophical ideas.Since Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling was published in 1671,studies on its author,its drama theory,garden aesthetics as well as life aesthetics have achieved fruitful results.However,the systematic research on its ecological thinking is so few that needs to be enriched.Language is a tool for people to exchange ideas and text is the carrier of ideas.At present,there have been only few studies of Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling from the perspective of discourse analysis.The Appraisal System was put forward by Martin in the 1990 s.It mainly studies how language users adopt evaluation resources to express their views and attitudes,which provides us with a powerful framework to do discourse analysis.Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling is full of Li Yu's eco-philosophical and aesthetic evaluation of plants and animals,and his attitudes toward life.Therefore,Appraisal System has become an ideal framework for interpreting the ecological philosophical and aesthetic ideas in this book.Thus,by adopting both quantitative and qualitative approaches,this study selects 30 texts from the Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling as the data,attempting to make an ecological discourse analysis based on the framework of Appraisal System and eco-philosophy.Through detailed analyses,it can be found that there are abundant appraisal resources in the selected texts,of which the attitude resources account for the largest proportion with most of them being positive.By adopting such attitude resources,Li Yu vividly expresses his respect,adoration and affinity for nature.In order to attract more readers to accept his ecological philosophical ideas,Li Yu employs a large number of engagement resources to make his viewpoints more valid and warrantable.By up-scaling and down-scaling the attitude and engagement resources,graduation resources strengthen Li Yu's emotions so as to achieve the emotional agreement with his readers.Through the adoption of abundant evaluation resources,Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling embodies Li Yu's pursuit of the “Heaven-Man Oneness” and “Intersubjectivity” ecological philosophy,and his ecological aesthetics of loving and appreciating nature with an aesthetic attitude.Such ecological wisdom is of great significance at present for improving people's ecological awareness so as to build an eco-civilized society.In a word,this study attempts to explore the ecological philosophical and aesthetic ideas implied in Casual Expressions of Idle Feeling based on the theoretical framework of Appraisal System and eco-philosophy,which provides a new angle for the interpretation of this book and also enriches the foreign language studies of it.In addition,it also broadens the research scopes of Appraisal System and validates its interpretative power in the analysis of the ancient Chinese.In a broad sense,this study can also make contribution to the promotion of traditional culture as well as the construction of eco-civilized society.