| In Anthropocene era,how to discover,analyze and solve ecological problems with the help of language and to achieve the co-existence and co-prosperity between human and earth has become a new task in the field of linguistics.Ecological Discourse represents the relationship between human and nature.The study of Ecological Discourse at home and abroad is mainly from three Linguistic perspectives: First,research from Systemic Functional Linguistics perspectives mainly based on three meta-functional and sub-systems theories reveals mutual construction between ecological discourse and social reality but can hardly explain ecological implicature in deep sense by linguistic features;Secondly,Ecolinguistic Analysis which is derived from Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis tends to follow the assumption that “society is unjust” and thus keeps focus on criticizing,revealing and challenging the destructive discourse of specialism,growthism,anthropocentrism,etc.from a position of “the disadvantaged”,somehow ignored the search for beneficial discourses;Thirdly,though the “social turn” made up for“neglect of social dimensions” of traditional cognitive linguistic,cognitive linguistic is still confined to interpersonal relationships and failed to achieve a broader ecological meaning.Thus,an integrate perspectives and theories of cognitive and Ecolinguistics,and a “complement” on Critical discourse analysis with positive discourse analysis,are essentially necessary to improve a more inclusive orientation of discourse analysis which does not only reveal “the evil” but also highlight “the good”.Stibbe(2015)argues that “story” as a cognitive structure that exists in the mind of an individual or is shared by members of society influences the way we view or treat the world in Ecolinguistics: Language,Ecology and the Stories We Live By.To solve ecological problems,we have to look for new stories that will help the wellbeing of nature actively.The excellent Chinese traditional culture is not only the origin of dealing with the relationship between man and nature for China,but also a contribution of wisdom to the plight of mankind.Chinese scholar Qian Mu(1991)pointed out that the theory of “harmony between man and nature” is the greatest contribution of Chinese culture to mankind.Lu Shuyuan(2019)holds that the oriental spirit will contribute its own value to the evolution of the ecological era in the next century.Visionaries in many Western countries also highly recognize Chinese culture as ideal source of beneficial stories and advocate “to find a new way for mankind with new stories”(Stibbe,2015)“from the deep ecological philosophy of traditional Chinese culture”(Goatly,2019).Huang Guowen,who is “a pioneer of Chinese ecolinguistics”(Hu Zhuanglin,2018:1),has put forward the theory of Harmonious Discourse Analysis.As a kind of“Chinese-style”(Huang Guowen,2016C:10),it emphasizes the “Chinese context” which includes Chinese social development stage and ecological philosophy in traditional culture as the premise to analyze Chinese ecological discourse.It takes the core elements of “one hypothesis and three principles” as guidance to decompose harmonious connotation of discourse and story,and the “harmony” ecosophy as a rule to judge types of them.It advocates a “multi-dimension and multi-level” observation on linguistic features of ecological discourse by an expansion from a single text to various types and finally to the whole language system,and discuss how to contribute to the promotion of harmonious social practice,in particular,how to extract beneficial discourses and stories that hightlight Chinese ecological values,and to provide the construction of a discourse system that more actively represents nature in global perspective with inspiration from Chinese discourse and culture.However,as an entirely new theory initially proposed in2016,it has been sketched out by only a few scholars so far and is to be further developed especially in Chinese discourse.In view of the above social and national conditions,the present study puts forward Harmonious Frame Analysis by integrating both perspectives of cognitive linguistics and ecolinguistics and methods of framing analysis and harmonious discourse analysis within“the Discourse-cognitive-society Triangle” of van Dijk.The framework links “language”and “society” by “story” which is a core concept of ecolinguistics,reveals how language influences the stories we live by and helps to construct a new society by “frame” which is an important tool in cognitive linguistics.Comply with“One hypothesis and Three principles” of HAD and follow the levels of frame,Harmonious Frame Analysis aims to promote a harmonious and beautiful world through optimization of discourse system with framing strategies which helps to reveal implied ecological values and explore cognitive mechnisms of ecological discourse.Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse,which bears the core of the current governance thought in China’s new stage of development,namely,Xi Jinping’s ecological civilization construction thought,which inherits and enhances the excellent Chinese traditional ecological culture.However,previous studies on Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse mainly focus on non-linguistic fields such as politics and studies from the linguistic perspective are quite insufficient.In this study,important documents including General Secretary Xi Jinping’s speeches,reports,talks,instructions,articles and congratulatory letters directly concerning “Economic,social development and eco-environmental problems” are selected(November 15,2012--December 15,2019)and build into a corpus of “Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse” with 84,395 words.With the help of ANTCONC3.5.8 software,this study analyzes interaction among “story(cognitive structure),discourse(linguistic choice)and pracice(relationship between man and nature,man and society)” in Chinese context by frames in Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse.The main questions of this study are as follows:(1)What surface frames are there in Xi’s ecological discourse? What deep frames are activated by surface ones? What ecological values can be revealed by deep frames?(2)What stories about China’s development can be revealed by above frames? What type of discourse is Xi’s ecological discourse judged by “harmony” ecosophy and what’s the power relationship between man and nature,man and society implied in it?(3)What framing strategies can be summarized from Xi’s ecological discourse?What suggestions can they provide for the construction of a more globally powerful Chinese discourse and what inspirations do they have for alternative discourse and beneficial stories that contribute to a beautiful world where everything is in harmony from global perspective?The major findings of this study are as follows:(1)At the surface frame level,among 33 metaphorical frames in Xi’s ecological discourse,there are 14 categories with high metaphorical echoes like “war,journey,mother,wealth,product,debt,disease,partner,community,container,architecture,wireframe,body,curriculum” represent metaphors that are more extensively and frequently employed.It can be inferred from the source domain that Xi’s conscious choice of daily necessaries people are familiar with helps to reduce the difficulty of decoding the discourse and enhance acceptance of the public.There are 9 categories with low metaphorical echoes like “personification,animals,warehouse,racing cars,homes,villages,barrels,chains and networks”,which showed metaphors that are of low productivity but helps to increase the richness of discourse.It can be seen from source domain of these metaphors that Comrade Xi Jinping has made a conscious effort to increase the ways by which he interprets the principles and policies of ecological civilization construction,especially promotes the construction of a discourse system expected to be beneficial not only for China but also for the rest of the world.There are10 categories like “diet,chess,sponge,rubber band,handband,scarecrow,child,rowing,key,baton” are of high m LFR values which showed novel metaphors.Source domain of these metaphors are representative of Chinese culture and helpful to improve innovativeness of Xi’s ecological discourse by deviation from the normal usage.It can be inferred that conceptual metaphor is an important way to simplify and conceptualize Xi Jinping’s interpretation of ecological civilization thought.The frequency of metaphors employed represents charm of Xi’s style which makes good use of people’s language to promote the public’s understanding of the idea of governing.Novel metaphors are helpful to construct Chinese discourse with ethic cultural features.In addition,Xi’s ecological discourse contains seven non-metaphorical surface frames composed of high-frequency words,which are “Green Development,people’s livelihood,community of interests/responsibility,de-growth,ecological dream,an image of responsible major power,productivity” with decreasing frequency,of which integration,selection,prominence,entrenchment and other cognitive mechanisms are employed to reveal new conception on China’s socialist construction in the new era of development and shape the country’s image by highlighting China’s pursuit of high-quality development and active leading role in environment reservation.At the deep frame level,four deep frames activated by the surface ones are the natural view of harmony between man and nature,the international view of unity among nations,the moral view of goodness,and the social view of integrity and diversity.It reveals that Chinese Government represented by Comrade Xi Jinping upholds “harmony” values consist of “harmony between man and nature” and “coexistence among nations”,providing an ideal value for sustainable development and harmonized society from three dimensions of economy,environment and society by unity of naturalism and humanitarianism.It also provides a value compliance for replacing the opposition between environmental protection and economic growth within traditional industrial economic system,development with philosophy of overriding economic growth,and changes the imbalance of justice and interests within the framework of the old international political and economic order by Chinese values like “common interests of self and others,blessed world with harmony and unity”.It contributes the world with core value of Chinese discourse embedded with Chinese wisdom in promoting the post-industrial civilization era towards a new civilization era,thus enhancing the Chinese discourse power of global climate governance.(2)The above frames revealed two new stories about China’s Development: The story of “harmony between man and nature” entails the direction of development(forward or backward)and the orientation of development(what are the pros and cons);The story of “Interpersonal Cooperation” includes the way of Development(competition or cooperation)and the goal of development(egoism or altruism).We examine the implications of “development” through stories and judge them good stories by actions they advocate.The first story focuses on well-being of the people and ecosystem that sustains all living things,and assesses the advantages and disadvantages of development by the synergy of economic and social development and ecological well-being.It is a beneficial story leading to a more ecologically beautiful world by seeking for a modernized human society with harmony between man and nature instead of an excessive pursuit of material wealth.The second story focuses on interests of the majority of people in the world and wellbeing of the planet with a goal of achieving sustainable development.It is a beneficial story that helps to unite common value of human development,promote public interests of all mankind and yeild a joint development of all countries in the world.To conclude,Xi’s ecological discourse,rooted in traditional Chinese Culture,tells a China’s new development story of twofold harmony between“man and nature” and “man and society”.It is a beneficial story that advocates high-quality development and a harmonious world.Judged by the “Harmony” ecosophy,Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse is harmonious discourse,which fully embodies the“people-oriented” hypothesis and three principles of “conscience,priority and restriction”.Two kinds of power relations are implied in Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse: the life relationship of harmonious coexistence and co-prosperity between man and nature,and the cooperative relationship of mutual benefit between China and other countries.Importantly,when judging Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse it has to be taken into consideration that there are categories not limited to three types of discourse defined by Stibbe(2015),and even for discourse belonging to the same type may differ in harmonious implicature within a continuum.For instance,Xi Jinping’s ecological discourse is judged harmonious by its constitution of people’s livelihood,ecological ethics,green development and strict environmental regulations in China,and the harmonious connotation of it is promoted by a broader vision of human community and a more inclusive concern on global ecological civilization.(3)There are three main strategies can be summarized from Xi’s ecological discourse: First,the wisely employed metaphors construct a harmonious picture.By an increasing framing power with mapping mechanism of conceptual metaphor and the semantic linkage between metaphors,33 metaphorical frames collaboratively formed an overall metaphorical scenario and a semanticlly harmonious discourse network,highlighting the harmony value of coordinated development among “humannature-society”.Secondly,the innovatively adopted frames tell a new story of harmonious development.To modify the development frame with a green development by increasing new connotation of “Harmonious Development” including publicity of ecological rationality and regulation of economic rationality,showing a positive interaction between value-added Natural capital and environmental improvement so as to achieve sustainable economic growth.To transfer development frame into common development by a shift goal of Chinese Dream and sustainable development to safeguarding ecological and environmental security of mankind and building a clean and beautiful world for all.Thirdly,the application of framing model helps to enhance global power of Chinese discourse.In activation stage,value and cultural identity are brought into a convergence by deep frames of harmony value activated by surface ones;In application stage,frames are customized for audiences of different cultures to improve acceptance by common values and interests.Additionally,the framing effect is also strengthened by compliance of frame levels and adherance to audiences’ cognitive rules.Major findings of this study can not only provide suggestions for globally more competitive Chinese discourse by an enhanced framing power of cultural foundation and world dimension,but also give inspirations to alternative discourse and beneficial stories that contribute to harmonious and beautiful world from a global perspective by an improved framing force with Chinese hormonious value.This study is to present Chinese characteristics by ecological discourse which is adapted to specific context of China and different from that of the Western world,thereby improves the current situation that the construction of “Cultural China” still lags behind “Economic China” and “Political China”;to represent the essence of Chinese traditional culture but with global significance that helps to solve ecological crisis with harmonious ecological consciousness of Chinese discourse resources and spiritual resources,promotes the transformation of China’s developmental advantages into discourse advantages and strives for a louder voice in global climate governance in currunt situation that“I am weak but the West is strong”. |
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