Abstract
A critical analysis of environmental discourse from the perspective of "ecological rhetorical discourse criticism" reveals that the non-ecological rhetorical function of environmental discourse is mainly demonstrated in "erasure" and "whitewash". Erasure in environmental discourse works in two directions: one is the erasure of the natural existence, while the other is the erasure of the agent. The two main rhetorical strategies to erase the agent are "passive voice" and complicated "nominalization". The rhetoric strategy to erase the natural world is mainly manifested in "objectification" and "personification", and the use of "hypernym" and "hyponym", etc. The rhetoric of whitewash is mainly euphemism, of which the function can be divided into three types, the "whitewashing" (in a narrow sense), "shallowwashing", and "greenwashing". Domestic ecocriticism has by far focused on the analysis of ecological literary texts, while popular cultural studies pays little attention to ecological culture. This paper, through crossing the boundaries between literary texts and non-literary texts from the perspective of ecological rhetorical discourse criticism, critically analyzes the non-ecological rhetoric functions and underlying constitution rules of a broader environmental discourse, with the aim to expand the vision and problem domain of ecocriticism and cultural studies, and hence to play a more practical role in constructing ecological culture and civilization today.
First Page
124
Last Page
135
Recommended Citation
Zhao, Kuiying. 2020. "Erasure and Whitewash: A Critical Analysis of Two Non-ecological Rhetorical Functions of Environmental Discourse." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 40, (3): pp.124-135. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol40/iss3/8
