On April 18, Dr. Tom Bartlett from CardiffUniversity of U.K. visited SFS and gave a lecture entitled "PositiveDiscourses of Sustainability: Bridging Discursive Divides". Deputy DeanProf. Li Zhanxi hosted the lecture, and Dean Prof. Huang Guowen and Deputy DeanProf. Chen Yang were present.

  Dr. Bartlett first briefly introduced three approaches to ecolinguisticstudy, and then with a paper that compared environmental discourses from Shelland Greenpeace, he explored the differences between the two in their ways ofconstructing environmental discourses, raising topics like "not all textsare equal", "some texts transmit faster" etc. On the basis ofthis, he then analyzed sustainability as an empty signifier, pointing out thatdifferent interest groups view this word from completely different perspectives.At the end of his lecture, Prof. Bartlett put forward a new model, i.e.,"Positioning Star of David", which incorporates three variables ofregister and conducts situationalized positive discourse analysis.

  Dr. Bartlett's lecture has close relation with the ecolinguisticresearch in SFS and his insightful ideas have inspired the teachers andstudents that attended the lecture.

(Reportby Qin Jianhua  Pictures by Cen Haoxian)