An Ecological Discourse Analysis Of Appraisal Resources In Environmental TED Talks

Nowadays,environmental issues are getting gradually worse.Serious situation drives humans to reconsider the relationship between mankind and nature.In the face of the ecological crisis,language,as the carrier of thoughts and ideas,plays an important role in shaping ecological awareness of people.Hence,ecolinguistics emerges as a new discipline.It deals with the way language influences the life-sustaining relationships of humans,other organisms and the physical environment.As a central approach in the discipline of ecolinguistics,ecological discourse analysis tries to reveal the impacts of human language and behavior on ecological systems.This study aims to conduct an ecological discourse analysis to explore the appraisal resources in the environmental TED talks with appraisal theory and the ecosophy of Living! as the theoretical basis.This study selects twenty-four pieces of environmental TED talks ranging from March,2020 to September,2021.All these talks are transcribed into 39,591 words and constructed into a small corpus.With the appraisal theory and the ecosophy of Living! integrated as the theoretical framework,the study uses UAM Corpus Tool3.3 to annotate the appraisal resources in the talks and adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore attitude resources,engagement resources and graduation resources,the ecological property and ecological ideologies constructed in the corpus.Specifically,qualitative inquiry is employed to explore appraisal resources as well as the ecological ideologies constructed in the discourses through analyzing specific examples of the corpus.Quantitative analysis statistically calculates the frequency and the distribution of all resources and their ecological property.The analysis concludes that first the environmental TED talks are rich in appraisal resources.Within the attitude system,appreciation resources occupy the highest number compared with judgment and affect resources,and the majority of appreciation resources are positive,highlighting the inherent value of other organisms and promoting the important role of technological innovation in solving environmental problems.With regard to engagement system,there are more heteroglossic resources than monoglossic ones and they are used for constructing a dialogic space and forming the interactive relationship between the speaker and the listener.Concerning to graduation resources,force type is the dominant resource,strengthening the severity of the environment and importance of the technology.Second,it is found that the majority of discourses are eco-beneficial and such discourses are mainly used for raising the ecological awareness of people,and eco-ambivalent ones only take a small percentage.Eco-destructive discourses do not occur in this corpus.Third,the study summarizes the ecological ideologies conveyed in the environmental TED talks from three perspectives.Negative resources of affect are used to state the severe situation of ecological environment humans live by;the importance of technological innovations is highly promoted,and the speakers make an appeal to mobilize all people global wide to build a green future that all humankind shares.This study demonstrates the feasibility of integrating appraisal theory and the ecosophy of Living!,providing a new framework reference for the future ecological discourse analysis.In addition,the results of this study can provide guidance for the creation of ecological environment speech texts and instructive suggestions for constructing ecologically beneficial discourses to improve the ecological literacy of the nation.