An Ecological Discourse Analysis Of Emily Dickinson’s Nature-themed Poetry From The Perspective Of Transitivity

Confronting the water depletion,environmental pollution,climate anomalies and other ecological imbalances,people have to re-examine and reflect on the relationship between man and nature.Eco-linguistics emerges as a new subject studying the sustainable relationship of language to human beings and other entities,with the natural environment and human beings themselves.Based on the theory of transitivity of systemic functional linguistic,the Ecological Sense of place as philosophical basis,this thesis analyzed Emily Dickinson’s nature-themed poetry from the perspective of ecology aiming to explore the distribution and realization of transitivity in the selected corpus,and then probe into the ecological implication embodied in Dickinson’s poetry.This study randomly selected 20 poems with the theme of natural landscape and animals and plants,adopted the quantitative analysis method to count the distribution of transitivity components in poetry,then qualitatively analyzed the ways and characteristics of the various transitivity components,and finally summarized and discussed the ecological meaning conveyed in the corpus.The following three questions will be worked out in this thesis: 1.How are the participant roles,processes and circumstances distributed in the selected corpus? 2.How are the participant roles,processes and circumstances realized in the selected corpus? 3.What is the ecological philosophy of Emily Dickinson based on the theory of Ecological Sense of Place and Eco-criticism?As for the distribution of transitivity components,it is found that processes are dominated by material process,mental process and relational process,the proportion of non-human entity participants and physical settings take the highest proportions in the participant system,and the main circumstance elements in the corpus is location and manner.Among them,material process is applied to describe the daily activities of nonhuman entities and Dickinson and to indicate her condensed observation of nature.Mental process reveals Dickinson’s sincere love for everything in nature by personalizing animals and plants.Relational process shows her hearty praise for nature by putting forward her cognition of nature itself and other non-human entities.Within the behavioral process,non-human entities are personified to conduct subconscious acts similar to humans,and ease and leisure of magnificent nature is revealed in this process.Verbal process primarily describes the harmonious communication of all things in nature and implies the ecological consciousness of harmonious coexistence of poetess.As for existential process,it mainly describes the surrounding scenery and stresses on the place where non-human entities and Dickinson locate.Additionally,the exploration of ecological implication is mainly carried out from two angles.First of all,although there are eco-ambivalent and eco-destructive discourse in poetry,the context of its occurrence shows that it concerns Dickinson’s awe of nature and other living bodies,so the poetry generally presents a protective ecological place.Secondly,through the choice of the role of the participants and the personified image,Dickinson constructs the natural ecological thought of equality and harmony;with the help of the metaphor of non-human entities and natural settings,Dickinson constructs the social ecological thought of caring about the state and the time;finally,by describing her senses and actions in exploring the mysteries of nature,she constructs her spiritual ecological thought of pursuing freedom and independence.Theoretically,the ecological philosophy of Dickinson is revealed in this study.The way how the poetess expresses her experience and feelings for nature through language form is found as well.The application of Ecological Sense of Place confirms the significance of ecosophy in the field of eco-linguistics in this thesis.Furthermore,the social significance concerning environmental conservation in Dickinson’s Poetry is reflected in the study.The guidance for further producing eco-beneficial discourse,developing eco-ambivalent discourse and reducing eco-destructive discourse is provided.The protective Ecological Sense of Place of harmonious coexistence of human and nature is promoted,and the ecological consciousness of human beings is awakened.