ABSTRACT

Discourse analysis has been widely applied to the study of environmental communication, highlighting how language is used to reflect and affect our attitudes towards the natural world. The potential of discourse analysis to ‘reveal’ the values that people attribute to nature has recently been recognized in the context of environmental debates. This paper takes a new cross-disciplinary approach to the analysis of evaluation, combining a discourse approach (specifically Appraisal analysis) and insights from environmental philosophy and environmental policy to address the following main questions:

(1) Which values of nature may be embedded in discourse about nature?

(2) To what extent are these values represented in people’s narratives about trees and woodland in the U.K.?

(3) What are the implications of the findings for the critical analysis of evaluative discourse?

(4) What are the implications of the findings for environmental organizations?

The analysis is applied to a sample of 514 woodland narratives collected by the U.K. charitable environmental organization Woodland Trust in 2016. The study highlights new critical perspectives that may be gained from the analysis of evaluative discourse and the importance of considering and fostering people’s affective relationship with the natural world in building a strong basis for environmental action.

摘要

话语分析已广泛应用于环境传播的研究，强调语言如何被用来反映和影响我们对自然世界的态度。最近，在环境辩论的背景下，话语分析在“揭示”人们赋予自然的价值方面的潜力得到了认可。本文采用新的跨学科方法进行评估分析，结合话语方法（特别是评估分析）和来自环境哲学和环境政策的见解，以解决以下主要问题：

(1) 在关于自然的话语中可以嵌入哪些自然价值？

(2) 在英国人们对树木和林地的叙述中，这些价值观在多大程度上得到了体现？

(3) 这些发现对评价性话语的批判性分析有什么影响？

(4) 调查结果对环保组织有何影响？

该分析应用于英国慈善环境组织 Woodland Trust 在 2016 年收集的 514 篇林地叙事样本。该研究强调了可能从分析评价性话语中获得的新的批判性观点，以及考虑和培养人们与他人的情感关系的重要性。自然世界为环境行动奠定了坚实的基础。