An Eco-discourse Analysis Of The Chinese And English Versions Of Wang Wei’s Pastoral Poems From The Perspective Of Transitivity

Halliday(1985)’s systemic functional linguistics is applicable and can provide a powerful theoretical basis for eco-discourse analysis.In recent years,much research at home and abroad have explored the ecological views of discourse from the perspective of transitivity of systemic functional linguistics,but there are few ecological analyses of Wang Wei’s pastoral poems and their English versions.In view of this situation,this thesis explores the ecological views of Wang Wei’s pastoral poems and its English versions from the perspective of transitivity.Specifically,it answers three research questions: 1)What are the occurrences of the transitivity system in the Chinese and English versions of Wang Wei’s pastoral poems?2)What are the functions of transitivity system in the Chinese and English versions of Wang Wei’s pastoral poems? 3)What kind of ecological views can be explored through the analysis of transitivity system in the corpora? The Chinese corpus of this thesis is 40 Wang Wei’s pastoral poems,whose English versions are selected from the translations by Xu Yuanchong and Pauline Yu.Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used.Quantitative analysis uses UAM Corpus Tool 3 to present the occurrences of transitivity system,while qualitative analysis shows the functions of transitivity system and ecological views.Results show that in transitivity system,the proportion of processes,participants and circumstances in these three corpora is different,but the proportion of participants is the highest.Material process,mental process and relational process are three main types of process among all process.In terms of participants,human participants and inanimate participants account for a large proportion.In terms of the function of transitivity system,different processes,participants and circumstances play an important role in the description of Wang Wei’s environment and state of mind.The high frequency words of processes and participants reflect the similarities and differences of the translator’s understanding and word selection.Through the analysis of the occurrences and functions of transitivity system,this thesis mainly reflects Wang Wei’s natural ecological perspective of co-existence with nature through humanization of participants,social ecological perspective of being harmonious with people through the description of living environment as well as spiritual ecological perspective of nobility through some material processes and mental processes.The above findings can help readers have a deep understanding of the ecological views of Wang Wei’s pastoral poems.It also suggests that transitivity system can be applied to eco-discourse analysis,and it is also of some reference for translators to translate pastoral poems.