Li Defeng
The University of Macau (UM) Faculty of Arts and Humanities (FAH) recently held the Macao Humanities Forum. The event featured Huang Guowen, dean of the School of Foreign Studies at South China Agricultural University and Changjiang Distinguished Professor, who delivered a lecture titled ‘Systemic Ecolinguistics and Harmonious Discourse Analysis’. Involving both in-person and virtual elements, the lecture attracted nearly 200 participants, including faculty members and students of UM.
At the forum, Li Defeng, associate dean of the FAH, delivered an opening speech and highlighted Prof Huang’s achievements and influence in the field of ecolinguistics and linguistics. Prof Huang began his lecture with an overview of the nature of ecolinguistics, its emergence, development, and related research at present. According to him, ecolinguistics is the study of the relationships and interactions between language and ecology, and one of the goals of ecolinguistics is to explore the role of language in the process of harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. He then summarised the ideas of Haugen and Halliday and introduced systematic ecolinguistics and its problem-oriented features with concrete examples. Finally, Prof Huang discussed his proposal of ‘harmonious discourse analysis’ from the perspective of the Chinese context and explored the roots of Chinese philosophy, the ‘people-oriented’ assumption, and the principles of conscience, proximity, and regulation for the analysis of ecological discourse and behaviour.
After the lecture, UM faculty members and students, as well as online participants, had a discussion on the theme with Prof Huang. Xu Jie, dean of the FAH, and Joaquim Kuong, assistant dean of the FAH, also participated in this forum. Held every academic year, the forum aims to provide a platform for world-renowned scholars from different humanities fields to share their latest research results with the UM community and local teachers and students. This is the first lecture of the forum in the 2022/2023 academic year.
