An Analysis Of Ecological Discourse From The Perspective Of Transitivity

As environmental issues become increasingly prominent,the study of ecological linguistics has attracted the attention of researchers at home and abroad.Linguists attempt to solve ecological environmental problems from the perspective of ecological linguistics,using ecological discourse analysis to explore the relationship between language and ecology.They try to reveal the impact of language on different ecological relationships and awaken the ecological consciousness behind language and achieve harmonious development between humans and ecology.TED is the world’s largest non-profit speaking platform,which invites many professionals from the fields of science,literature,and music to express insights,and disseminate valuable ideas.With the worsening ecological environment,many scholars have delivered environmental speeches on the TED platform,expounding ecological issues and stimulating people’s awareness of environmental protection.Based on the transitivity theory of systemic functional linguistics,this paper collected environmental speeches from 2018 to 2019 on the official TED website,and selected 20 environmental speeches with the highest page views as corpus.With the help of the UAM Corpus Tool 3.0,the thesis adopts quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to explore the distribution and realization of transitivity in TED environmental speeches.It attempts to conduct ecological discourse analysis to reveal the ecological significance of its discourse.This thesis aims to answer the following three questions:(1)How is transitivity system distributed in TED environmental speeches?(2)How is transitivity system realized in TED environmental speeches?(3)What ecological thoughts are constructed in TED environmental speeches by analyzing the distribution and realization of transitivity system?The study found that:(1)In the distribution of transitivity,the proportion of material participants is the highest,reaching 43.77%,with human and environmental entities as the largest proportion;The distribution of material processes and relational processes is the highest,reaching 65.02% and 19.96% respectively;Location,Extent,and Matter account for the highest proportion in the distribution.The distribution of transitivity shows that different transitivity components play different roles in constructing ecological ideas in TED environmental speeches,with participant playing more important role.(2)In the realization of transitivity,environmental entities and humans alternate as participants;material process demonstrates the close relationship between the environment and humans;Relational process highlights the identity and characteristics of humans and the environment,and objectively demonstrates the interaction between humans and the environment;Mental process demonstrates the importance that humans attach to the environment;Behavioral processes describe human actions towards the environment;Verbal process expresses that human appeals for environmental protection;Existential process mainly describes the existence time and scope of the environment.(3)In terms of ecological ideology construction: The TED environmental speeches constructs ecological values of care,well-being,and value living.The speaker integrates transitivity resources,and in the role of participants,humans and environmental entities,demonstrating human attention and concern for the environment.They construct humans as builders of environmental protection and promoters of environmental development,enabling the audience to focus on the environment while also recognizing their own role in environmental protection;Through the use of personal pronouns,proper noun and so on,the environmental entities are personified,and speakers pull into the distance between each other,which breaks the binary opposition between human beings and the environment,shows human humanistic care,and warns that human beings cannot develop at the cost of environment;By expressing the significance of the existence of the environment,it highlights the value of the environment’s own life,it embodies the holistic idea of harmonious coexistence between humans and the environment.This study has certain theoretical and practical significance.This thesis combines transitivity system with ecological discourse analysis,which proves that systemic functional grammar can be applied to ecological discourse analysis.At the same time,this thesis extends the object of ecological discourse analysis to oral discourse such as speeches,which is conducive to the further improvement of ecological discourse analysis.Finally,the construction of ecological thought in the TED environment speeches reminds speakers of the need to pay attention to the deep meaning behind the discourse.