An Ecological Discourse Analysis Of High School English Textbooks Based On Transitivity System

As a carrier for knowledge construction and value penetration,textbooks are crucial for cultivating readers’ ecological ideologies and enhancing ecological literacy.In view of the deficiencies in the textbook discourse analysis of ecological value orientation in the current research,this study takes the reading sections in the compulsory series of FLTRP high school English textbooks(2019 edition)as the research object and makes a division of natural text and social text.Based on the transitivity system,with qualitative and quantitative analysis by using UAM Corpus Tool 3.3 and Nvivo 12 corpus analysis tools,the choice and configuration of transitivity resources,its distribution features in the textbook discourse are figured out,thus to explore the ecological orientation and the representation of ecological ideology,which involved the following two questions:1.What are the distribution features of transitivity resources in the texts of FLTRP English textbooks?2.What ecological orientations and ecological ideologies can be revealed by analyzing the transitivity system?The following findings can be unveiled.The typical distribution of the reading texts is reflected in the fact that participants and action processes account for the highest proportion in the configuration of transitivity resources,and the circumstantial roles are characterized by Time and Place to make the discourse representation more specific.The difference is that in natural texts,the process is dominated by action process and relational process,and the mental process accounts for the least.In the process of action and the configuration of participants,humans are usually regarded as the leader of activities and take actions for nature;The relational process often configures individual inanimate and describes the characteristics of the natural environment;Mental process presents the interaction between man and nature in the mental world.The representation of transitivity in social texts is mainly embodied in action process and mental process,and the relational process is the least.The participants in social texts are mainly humanoriented and involve ecological factors such as multiculturalism,interpersonal communication,science,and technology.On the characteristics of ecological orientation,in natural texts,ambivalent discourses are the most,followed by beneficial discourses and destructive discourses,which mainly focus on the ecological relationship between man and nature.In terms of ecologically beneficial discourse,it conveys human’s affection and concern for nature.Nevertheless,negative and ambivalent human-oriented ideologies are also presented.Among the social texts,the beneficial discourses are the most,followed by ambivalent discourses and the least destructive discourses.The beneficial discourses convey the value of social attributes.The ambivalent discourses are embodied in objective facts.The destructive discourses are manifested by the ineffective communication between man and man,especially in campuses and families,and the negative cognition of human beings on the development of science and technology.For the overall ecological orientation of the textbooks,there are many ecologically beneficial discourses,but there are still some ecologically ambivalent discourses and ecologically destructive discourses.Hence,textbook users should critically interpret the ecological ideologies hidden behind the discourse,optimize the discourse representation,and resist the destructive discourse covering anthropocentrism and hedonism.In this study,the transitivity system is applied to the ecological analysis of textbook discourse,which is conducive to constructing the ecological ideologies of teachers and students for foreign language learning,avoiding destructive discourse,improving ambivalent discourse,and telling the ecological stories from the perspective of educating people.Furthermore,the ability of teachers and students to utilize the beneficial discourse of textbooks is enhanced,and there are some references that are instrumental for textbook revision.