Chapter 9 – Environmental discourse, poetry and the ecological crisis

Activities

(Activities that are asterisked are particularly useful for discussion in class, in which case multiple copies or PowerPoints of the text could be produced.)

*Activity 53*

Find or write a short lyric poem and analyse the patterns of transitivity that are found there. In what ways, if any, do these patterns resemble those found in the poets analysed in this chapter?

Quiz

Further Reading

Further reading for Chapter 9

Further reading for Chapter 9

  1. Arran Stibbe’s excellent Ecolinguistics expands the coverage of the language of environmentalism introduced in this chapter. He discusses in technical detail the stories – myths, ideologies and identities – we construct about ourselves in relation to the natural world.
    • Stibbe, A. (2015). Ecolinguistics: Language, Ecology and the Stories We Live By. Abingdon: Routledge.
  2. Halliday’s article ‘Language and the order of nature’ is seminal in bringing to light the problems of mismatch between grammar of scientific texts and the physical ‘realities’ discovered by twentieth-century science. These ideas are developed in conjunction with Jim Martin in Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power. However, in ‘Green grammar and grammatical metaphor’ Goatly takes issue with Halliday and Martin’s conclusions. Goatly’s and Halliday’s articles can be found in Fill and Mühlhäusler’s interesting collection The Ecolinguistics Reader.
    • Fill, A. and Mühlhäusler, P. (2001). The Ecolinguistics Reader. London: Continuum.
    • Halliday, M.A. (1987). ‘Language and the order of nature’. In C. McCabe, N. Fabb, and D. Attridge (eds), The Linguistics of Writing: Arguments Between Language and Literature. New York: Methuen.
    • Halliday, M.A.K. and Martin, J.R. (2003). Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power. London: Routledge.
  3. These problems of mismatch between grammar and quantum physics have been eloquently expressed by David Bohm in Wholeness and the Implicate Order, though his linguistic solutions to the problem are rather eccentric and impractical. Towards the end of his life Bohm visited the Blackfoot Algonquin tribe in Dakota and claimed that they spoke the language he needed for describing the realities of quantum physics. This is documented in David Peat’s Blackfoot Physics. For an insider view of the Blackfoot language, read the fascinating article by Leroy and Ryan.
  4. Andrew Goatly’s Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology chapter 7 is a more extensive exploration of issues about grammar and ecology sketched in this chapter. It develops the argument by contrasting the grammar of European languages with Blackfoot.
    • Goatly, A. (2007). Washing the Brain: Metaphor and Hidden Ideology. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, PA: Benjamins
  5. Kristin Davidse in ‘Language and world view in the poetry of G.M. Hopkins’ shows how this nineteenth-century English poet exploits the ergative vocabulary of English to depict the relationship between humanity, nature and god. The article would make an interesting complement to this unit.
    • Davidse, Kristin. (1994). ‘Language and world view in the poetry of G.M. Hopkins’. In O. de Graef et al., Acknowledged Legislators: Essays on English Literature in Honour of Herman Seurotte. Kapellen: Pelchmans.
  6. Peter Mühlhäusler has an interesting article, ‘Linguistic adaptation to changed environmental conditions’. In this he sketches how immigrants to ecologically rich but unfamiliar environments, such as Australia, Mauritius and New Zealand, lack the vocabulary for local fauna and flora, and details the linguistic consequences of this lack. In ecological terms he suggests that if you cannot identify or name a species you may not realise you are losing it.
    • Mühlhäusler, P. (1996). ‘Linguistic adaptation to changed environmental conditions: some lessons from the past’. In A. Fill (ed.), Sprachökologie und Ökolinguistik. Tübingen: Stauffenburg-Verlag.      
  7. Mary Schleppegrell has written several articles on language in environmental education, especially ‘Abstraction and agency in middle school environmental education’, which concentrate on how textbooks often fail to identify the perpetrators of environmental degradation through, among other grammatical devices, nominalisation and passivisation.
    • Schleppegrell, M.J. (1996). ‘Abstraction and agency in middle school environmental education’. In Language and Ecology: Eco-Linguistics. Problems, Theories and Methods. Essays for the AILA 1996 Symposium, pp. 27–42.
  8. From a more literary point of view, Jonathan’s Bate’s Romantic Ecology devotes much attention to Wordsworth’s relationship with nature, and its relevance to current ecological debates.
    • Bate, J. (2013). Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition. Abingdon: Routledge.
  9. On modern scientific theory and the move beyond Newton, Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point are quite accessible. For a rather difficult and challenging book on one modern physical theory, chaos theory, try Prigogine and Stengers’ influential Order out of Chaos. James Lovelock’s popular Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth and the more technical The Ages of Gaia are essential background to one modern ecological theory.
    • Capra, F. (1976). The Tao of Physics. London: Fontana.
    • Capra, F. (1983). The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture. London: Flamingo.
    • Lovelock, J. (2000). Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Lovelock, J. (2000). The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    • Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I. (1984).Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. London: Flamingo.
  10. For details of the theoretical debate on the concepts of ‘ecocentrism’ and ‘anthropocentrism’, refer to Andrew Dobson and Neil Carter.
    • Carter, N. (2007). The Politics of the Environment: Ideas, Activism, Policy (2nd edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Dobson, A. (2007). Green Political Thought (4th edn). London: Routledge.
  11. Examples of exploitation of natural resources by big corporations to further consumerist ideology and their reactions to criticism can be found in the links below. The first link is a report on how multinationals are affecting both the quantity and quality of water by extracting large quantities for their factories. The second link is an interesting example of how corporations combat criticism through carefully designed webpages claiming they are restoring what they extract from nature. The two links are examples of various issues covered so far, such as resistance to advertising (from Chapter 7), media battles (involving social media) (Chapter 8) and the fight between big business and the environment, and the role of the expert, particularly conflicting expert opinions.
  12. Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything brings together the themes of Chapters 7 and 9. In a remarkably upbeat book she details the ecological crisis and shows that the campaigns to resist environmental degradation are providing an opportunity to tackle global inequality.
    • Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  13. The poems discussed in the final section of the chapter are from Alice Oswald’s Woods and The Collected Poems of Edward Thomas. The website below is a good source for other poems on the environment and is an example of how poetry enables a better understanding of nature and ecological issues. Poems from the website can be analysed to see how they employ various linguistics strategies to represent the environment.
    • Thomas, E. (1936). Collected Poems.London: Faber.
    • Oswald, Alice (2008). Woods etc. London: Faber.
    • Poetrysoup.com. (2015). Best Environment Poems. www.poetrysoup.com/poems/best/environment, retrieved 19 October 2015.

Supplementary material