Raising Sustainability Awareness through Positive Discourse: An Ecolinguistic Study of Selected Children’s Stories by Ruskin Bond

Abstract

Ecology and its sustainability are the major concern of the 21 st century. Ecolinguistics, which combines the field of ecology with that of linguistics is the focus of the current paper. The study utilises Halliday's (2014) transitivity system for the analysis of children's stories from an ecolinguistics perspective. By investigating its core components: Participant (PR), process (Pro) and circumstance (CR) from an ecological perspective, the study aims to identify the frames, created by linguistic features, that Bond draws upon to shape children's perspective about environmental concerns. The study relies on Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) to analyse children's discourse concerned with nature from an ecolinguistic perspective and to identify Bond's ecosophy.