Positive Ecological Discourse Analysis Of Japanese Haiku From The Perspective Of Halliday’s Transitivity System

Nowadays,rapid development of economy has led to increasingly severe ecological problems,which makes us reconsider the relationship between man and nature.In essence,ecological problems are problems of human conceptions,including the attitude people towards other creatures.In order to solve these problems,it is necessary to change human’s conception of ecology.Japanese haiku,as an ecological discourse,encourages readers to think beyond language and establish connection with nature in a more direct way.At present,scholars’ enthusiasm for haiku research is relatively high,but most of them mainly focus on the translation,creation as well as intercultural comparative appreciation of haiku,whereas the ecological value of haiku is rarely studied.In view of this,the thesis adopts both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods to study the natural ecology of Japanese haiku discourse.The author takes Halliday’s transitivity system as the theoretical framework,together with the beneficial discourse of Stibbe(2015)as the core conception of this thesis.Halliday’s transitivity system construes the world of experience into a manageable set of process types,which are material,mental,relational,behavioural,verbal and existential process.Stibbe’s beneficial discourse contains three aspects: 1)valuing life and paying attention to the healthy development of all organisms;2)abandoning the idea of anthropocentrism,highlighting the conception of ecocentrism as well as the significance of ecology;3)connecting other creatures actively,coexisting and developing with them harmoniously.The author collects as many as 400 pieces of haiku,and selects 48 pieces for the transitivity analysis.The result shows that there are many material processes and relational processes being used in these samples.Haiku poets in the material process tend to use animals,plants and non-living objects as ‘actors’ rather than ‘goals’ to reflect their initiative,while relationship process mainly introduces the attributes and identities ofdifferent carriers.In order to study the ecological concepts contained in these processes,the author then divides haiku into three types of weather,plant and animal for more detailed analysis and finally learns that haiku is full of natural and ecological language,which is beneficial discourse.To be specific,the following results are found: 1)Haiku poets,to a large extent,make positive appraisal for various animals,plants as well as non-living substances.They are keen on appreciating lives,including useless weeds as well as obnoxious insects like mosquitoes and flies.They give all kinds of weather the feature of life by using the rhetoric device of personification,and treat plants and animals as individuals with awareness rather than as abstract symbols.2)Haiku poets set up a world of equality,where oppression and killing can hardly happen and creatures do their things with freedom.Mankind is neither the center of the world nor the master of other creatures.While animals and plants,dominated and disturbed by nobody,are agents of their own and act on their instinct.3)Haiku poets never try to separate human beings from their living environment,but rather create a world where human races and the non-human-beings can live in peace.They cherish the present moment instead of constructing a story occurred previously.They advocate direct contact with the real nature and enjoy whispering to mosquitoes intimately at night.This thesis also discusses some ecological inspirations that we draw from haiku for the present society,that is,the ecological wisdom of haiku provides people with a good living model,and will make an extraordinary contribution to the healthy sustainable development of mankind as well as all other living creatures;the rhyme beauty of haiku may provide an alternative way for a better and more ecological use of our language such as in public sign,media propaganda,interpersonal communication and so on.This paper aims to enhance readers’ comprehension of Japanese haiku and appreciate the ecological beauty through analyzing the positive ecological concept in haiku.Meanwhile,readers’ ecological literacy is expected to be improved so that the readers can become more ecological in both language and action,and make positive changes to the environment we live by.