Abstract—With the rapid development of economy, the
ecological problems are becoming more serious. Ecolinguistics
emerged jointly with the “ecological turn” [1] among numerous
disciplines. The present research conducts a contrastive
Ecological Discourse Analysis under the framework of Thematic
Theory of Halliday, aiming to examine the thematic choices
made in the environmental speeches from the US and UK and
shed light on the implications of their respective ecological
ideologies. Findings suggest that, a major part of the US’s theme
selections is animated (46.4%), express a philosophy of
“America first”, and therefore indicate the notion of
“anthropocentrism.” More inanimate theme selections were
made in the UK than in America (39.4% vs. 28.4%), showing
that the British public are more considerate of their
surroundings. Both nations have shown certain responsibility as
economic powers in the face of serious environmental problems
Index Terms—Ecosophy and ideology, Ecological Discourse
Analysis (EDA), political speeches, theme system
Jiaqi Hu is with Northwestern Polytechnical University, China.
E-mail: hujq27@163.com
[PDF]
Cite:Jiaqi Hu, "A Contrastive Ecological Discourse Analysis Based on Theme System—Take Environmental Speeches from the US and UK as an Example," International Journal of Languages, Literature and Linguistics vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 385-390, 2023.