ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEWS IN ENGLISH AND URDU POETRY: ACOMPARATIVE ECOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

The present study focussed on the language and ideology of nature and ecological consciousness in selected
English and Urdu poetry using the perspective of Ecolinguistics. The research used the framework given by Stibbe
(2015) on “stories we live by” and selected four poems from the canonical Romantic English and classical Urdu
poetic traditions—Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley, The World Is Too Much with Us by William
Wordsworth, ہمالہ by Allama Iqbal, and آزادی صبح by Faiz Ahmed Faiz to uncover the ecological worldview in
these traditions. A qualitative, descriptive–interpretive research design was used, and the ecological discourse
analysis of the poems was based on the eight forms of story: ideology, framing, metaphor, evaluation, identity,
conviction, erasure and salience. The results indicated that the poems mostly produced positive, ecocentric
discourses in which nature was foregrounded as powerful, sacred and autonomous, and human dominance in
industrialization was neutralized. Iqbal and Shelley were prophetic, seeing nature as reverent and self-regulating;
Wordsworth was critical of materialism as being ecologically harmful; and Faiz used the logic to the social
sphere, making freedom an incomplete and interdependent system. Both traditions used the same kind of language
strategies to achieve these goals, which is to say, to develop an ecological awareness and to confront
anthropocentric worldviews, the study found. The results have implications for teachers, students, and researchers
of linguistics and literature: the importance of the cross-cultural ecolinguistic approach in creating
environmental responsibility.