Representation of Nature in William Wordsworth’s Poetry: An Ecolinguistic Study

Abstract

This work examines the linguistic and discursive depiction of nature in the chosen poems by William Wordsworth using the eco-linguistic prism. Although the poems of Wordsworth have received extensive criticism in terms of Romanticism and ecocriticism, very little has been done to explore the grammatical processes that generate an ecological meaning. In order to close this gap, the paper combines the ideas of the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Positive Discourse Analysis (PDA) to study six poems: Tintern Abbey, Lines Written in Early Spring, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, The Solitary Reaper, The World Is Too Much with Us, and The Tables Turned. The researchers conduct the study with the help of transitivity analysis to identify the types of processes, the role of their participants, and conditions to understand the encoding of human-nature relationships at the clause level. The framework of the interpretation of the ethical and ecological orientations, which are internalized in the poems, is the PDA framework of Stories We Live By. The analysis shows that Wordsworth always portrays nature as something living, conscious, and morally important and places man in the roles of students and participants as opposed to being a domineering force. These language forms advance life-supporting ecological discourses that are based on harmony, care, and interdependence. The article shows that the ecological vision of the Wordsworth is structurally imprinted in language and provides useful information in eco-linguistic and literary studies.