Human-nature relationships in experiential meaning: transitivity system of Chinese from an ecolinguistic perspective

ABSTRACT

Following a systemic functional approach to ecolinguistic studies, this study explores the Chinese transitivity system's interpretative potential in revealing the dynamic relationship between human beings and their living places. The research extends the transitivity system under the ethical framework of Ecological Sense of Place, drawing on theories from human geography and traditional Chinese philosophies. Within such a premise, the system of process configurations and participants of Chinese process types are reinterpreted, arguing that both the participant and the process should be judged through an ecological lens concerning their function in construing the human-place relationships. The scale of influence and environmental stances of Participant roles is addressed, following a belief that every entity contains participative potential as -er/-ed role of a process. Place as a circumstantial role is expressly acknowledged for their contribution to circumscribe people-place relationships. Regarding the process types, a reconsideration of their emotive, cognitive and agentive features is proposed to reveal the embedded attitudes toward places. These observations extend the knowledge on how the transitivity system can be refined to show the speaker/writer's attitude toward the ecology and its further influences on the collective understanding of human-nature relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Human-nature relationship
• experiential meaning
• transitivity system of Chinese
• ecolinguistic perspective

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by Major Program of National Social Science Fund of China: Database Construction of Language Resources of Those Countries along the Belt and Road and Contrastive Studies between Chinese and Foreign Languages (19ZDA319) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, P. R. China: Construction of Ecological Discourse Analysis (FRF-TP-18-085A1).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Alwin Fill (1998) identified two approaches to the study of ecolinguistics, the Haugen approach and the Halliday approach. For the Haugen approach, “ecology” is understood metaphorically and concerns language(s) in an environment. For the Halliday approach, “ecology” is understood in its biological sense. This research follows the insight of the Halliday approach, and for further discussion of the Haugen approach, please refer to Haugen (1972).

2. Discussions about whether an ecolinguistic study should be based on its principles, methodologies and analyzing frameworks could be found in Huang (2018), He and Wei (2018), He and Gao (2019).

3. This is not an absolute judgment as in an extreme case, and this particular person may also decide to take his garbage out and throw it in the forest while walking. The example is provided as an explanation for the working scheme of the ecosophy. Reliable decisions can only be made based on specific contexts.

4. Examples in this research are from online resources, with minor modifications. The semantic configuration is displayed following the pattern of He et al. (2017). Key for the abbreviations in this research: Pro = Process, PrEx = ProcessExtension, Cir = Circumstance, Ag = Agent, Af = Affected, Em = Emoter, Ph = Phenomenon, Comr = Communicator, Comee = Communicatee, Comd = Communicated, Ag-Perc = Agent-Perceiver, Af-Ca = Affected-Carrier, Dir: Des = Direction: Destination, Cre = Created, Ext = Existent, Loc = Location, Ra = Range, So = Source.

5. Existential processes and meteorological processes are excluded since their participants typically have different references.

6. These categories are not mutually exclusive. A risk loser also might be a gainer in some respects, for example, through new employment opportunities.

7. The two variant examples of “Mark walking in the park to release the stress” are by no means typical expressions. The research uses them to indicate the same ecological potential of different process types.

8. The possessive process and the directional process both belong to the relational process following the framework of He et al. (2017). The possessive process construes the ownership between the Possessor and the Possessed entities, expressed either as “somebody owns something” (Posr + Pro + Posd) or “something belongs to somebody” (Posd + Pro + Posr). The directional process realizes the relationship between entities and their origins, paths and destinations, containing Participants of the Carrier, the Source, the Path, or the Destination.

9. According to He et al. (2017), the communicative process represents more than the verbal process defined by Halliday but includes a sense of “intentionality” in such processes and rules out specific events that can be regarded as behavioral processes.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by National Social Science Fund of China [19ZDA319] and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [FRF-TP-18-085A1].

Notes on contributors

Ruijie Zhang

Ruijie Zhang , PhD of literature, is a lecturer of linguistics with School of Foreign Studies (SFS) in University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB). She is also a member of the Association Committee of China Association of Ecolinguistics. Email: [email protected].

Wei He

Wei He , PhD of literature, is Professor of Linguistics and PhD supervisor with National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU). She is at the same time the Chair of China Association of Ecolinguistics. Email: [email protected].