The Mental Processes in Beauty of Shaanxi: An Ecological Discourse Analysis Perspective

Documentaries, with their vivid scenes and concise language, have become an essential medium in film and television art forms. One such documentary, Beauty of Shaanxi, showcases the unique natural and cultural landscape of China’s Shaanxi Province. The study examines this documentary to explore how its narration shapes the construction of ecological responsibility and sustainable development in China’s Shaanxi Province. Despite existing research on ecological discourse, there is a gap in understanding the role of mental processes in documentary narration. Utilizing He et al.’s ecological discourse analysis framework, we focus on the representation of mental processes within the transitivity system. A detailed analysis is conducted to identify these processes and their semantic configurations. Situated within ecolinguistics and social constructionism, our study aims to fill the research gap by analyzing how the documentary constructs a specific ecological narrative. The findings reveal that Beauty of Shaanxi utilizes specific mental processes, including emotive, perceptive, cognitive, and communicative processes, to present ecological issues, thereby contributing to the social construction of ecological practices. This underscores the significant role of media in shaping ecological discourse.