An Eco-discourse Analysis On Emily Dickinson’ Nature Poems From The Perspective Of Transitivity System

Ecological discourse analysis(EDA),as a new discipline,aims to reveal the role of language in ecology.As a theoretical basis,transitivity system is helpful to explore the ecological thoughts implied by ecological discourse.American poet Emily Dickinson(1830-1886)completed about1700 poems in total;more than 500 are related to nature.From the perspective of Ecolinguistics,they are called ecological discourse.Based on this,the study will present the ecological discourse analysis of Emily Dickinson’s 30 nature poems in the theoretical framework of transitivity system,aiming for revealing the author’s ecological thoughts through language.By combining quantitative and qualitative methods and with the help of UAM Corpus Tool 3.3,this paper aims for answering the following three questions: 1.what is the distribution of transitivity system in Emily Dickinson’s nature poems? 2.What is the realization of transitivity system in Emily Dickinson’s nature poems? 3.What kind of ecological thoughts are conveyed through the transitivity discourse analysis of Emily Dickinson’s nature poems?Through the study of Emily Dickinson’s nature poems,the main findings are as follows: 1.The six processes and participants of transitivity system distribute in Emily Dickinson’s poems.Among them,the action process,relational process and mental process and their participants account for the main proportion,and the proportion of behavioral process,communicative process and existential process are small.It shows that the first three processes play a more important role in expressing ecological thought.2.In Emily Dickinson’s nature poems,action process mostly shows her careful observation of the beautiful natural scenery and creatures such as birds and snakes.Mental process shows the human beings,animals and plants’ consciousness and Emily Dickinson’s attitude towards natural life.Relational process describes the attribute,identification,location,direction and others of plants,animals,etc.Behavioral process is mostly used to describe the living habits and behaviors of animals and human beings in nature.The participants of communicative process are almost animals,aiming for personifying animals in nature.Existential process is used to show how natural things exist.3.Emily Dickinson’s ecological thoughts can be analyzed through transitivity system.Emily Dickinson’s natural ecological thought lies in keeping the equality between human and nature and believing the peaceful coexistence between them.Emily Dickinson’s social ecological thought mainly lies in the criticism of industry,technology and science.Through the certain mental process and the action process,Emily Dickinson’s spiritual ecological thought is shown as keeping far away from the earthly world and living in a peaceful life.Based on the transitivity system,this thesis takes an EDA on Emily Dickinson’s nature poems,aiming to reveal the feasibility of transitivity system in analyzing EDA.Through studying and exploring Emily Dickinson’s ecological thought,we can guide readers to establish a healthy ecological view and enhance their sense of ecological responsibility.At the same time,this study can also provide some reference for the writing of ecological discourse.