Ecological Discourse Analysis Of BBC Nature Documentaries

With the rapid development of the economy,science and technology,natural resources are overexploited and animals’ living environment is largely destroyed.A variety of ecological and environmental problems emerge one after another.The relationship among humans,animals and nature becomes increasingly tense.This ecological crisis is fully reflected in nature documentaries,which become the ideal research objects of ecological discourse analysis on account of their focus on the relationship between humans and nature.Previous studies on nature documentaries mainly focused on shooting techniques and narrative techniques.Few studies were conducted to reveal the ecological values hidden in the commentary from the perspective of discourse analysis.Given this research gap,the current research aims to find the patterns of lexicogrammatical resources concerning humans,animals and nature in the BBC nature documentary Seven Worlds,One Planet from the aspects of REFERENCE system,TRANSITIVITY system and MODALITY system,reveal the living conditions,degree of activeness and hierarchical status of animals and explore the ecosophy implied in this discourse.Based on the textual features of this nature documentary,this research selects REFERENCE system,TRANSITIVITY system and MODALITY system from the theories of Systemic Functional Grammar as the analytical framework.The data consist of 16712 words transcribed from the commentary of the seven-episode nature documentary Seven Worlds,One Planet.In REFERENCE system,the analysis is conducted from four major aspects:the numbers of nouns and pronouns,demonstratives and definite articles referring to or modifying humans,animals and nature,the numbers of singular and plural forms of entities as well as personal and non-personal pronouns referring to animals.The research indicates that animals and nature are in the prominent position in the documentary,while humans are in the peripheral position.Besides,although animals are,to some extent,endowed with certain humanness in the documentary,anthropocentrism still exists.Moreover,the individual differences of animals are ignored to a certain degree in the documentary.In TRANSITIVITY system,participants,processes and circumstances are analyzed respectively.Participants are first grouped into two categories:logical subjects and logical objects followed by the analysis of their numbers and distribution.Of them,logical subjects include Actor,Carrier,Senser,etc.and logical objects include Object,Attribute,Phenomenon,etc.Besides,the number and proportion of each process are also analyzed as well as the subcategories of some processes and the participant roles acted by humans,animals and nature in each process.Moreover,the distribution and functions of circumstances are analyzed subsequently.The research shows that in most cases,animals are regarded as agents and endowed with certain perceptions and consciousness in the documentary.Nevertheless,animals possess little power to influence other entities.Their perception and activeness are very limited.In addition,the description of animals and nature mainly reflects the harsh living conditions of animals.In MODALITY system,the finite modal operators in the documentary are analyzed from the aspects of modality type and modality value.The research finds that a number of finite modal operators expressing probability are used in the documentary,most of which are of median and low values,while finite modal operators expressing obligation and inclination are rarely used,of which the former is more frequently used than the latter.Besides,the use of modalization is far more frequent than that of modulation.The results indicate that although the documentary takes animals and nature as the Subject in most cases,it,in essence,expresses the speaker’s evaluation and comments and is from the standpoint of the speaker.Animals in the documentary are generally in a passive position and lack activeness.Most of their actions are reluctantly done under the pressure of survival caused by the external environment.The following conclusions can be drawn from the analysis.First of all,the documentary reflects the difficult living conditions,low degree of activeness and low hierarchical status of animals.Secondly,the ecosophy reflected by this discourse shows the evidence of duality.On the one hand,this documentary endows animals with humanness and shows the inclination of taking animals and nature as the center.On the other hand,however,this effort is greatly constrained by the grammatical resources of the existing linguistic system.It is hard to break through this limitation to construct new meanings without changing the existing linguistic system.Therefore,to some extent,this documentary is ecologically beneficial.It enhances people’s understanding of animals and nature,provokes people’s reflection on human ecologically destructive behaviors,and arouses people’s awareness of protecting animals and nature.In essence,however,it is not free from the ideology of anthropocentrism.