生态身份是人们在生态话语实践中话语建构的结果，也是人们多重社会身份的重要组成部分。环境保护跟每个人的生活息息相关，因此环境新闻语篇是具有广泛受众的新闻语篇类型，而探究环境新闻语篇的受众生态身份定位是理解语篇作者如何赋予自己、受众和自然环境以生态意义的关键。然而，当前学界对环境新闻语篇话语主体的身份建构研究很少，对受众生态身份建构的讨论更不多见。

本研究以定位理论为核心，结合系统功能语言学和批评话语分析的话语实践论、话语建构观和生态语言学的生态哲学观，建立了定位理论视角下的受众生态身份建构的话语分析框架。在这一分析框架中，环境新闻语篇作者通过对语言资源的选择和话语策略的实施，将其生态观融入到环境框架的语篇建构中。这一过程是作者进行生态话语实践的过程，也是语篇实施其社会效力的过程。受众在生态话语实践中被定位，同时需要遵循这一身份位置所赋予的道德秩序和行为准则，实施自己合理利用自然的权利和保护环境的义务。在实施权利和义务的过程中，受众从语篇的消费者逐渐转向语篇生产者，对自然环境进行基于词汇语法的再识解，从而实现生态话语实践的循环，同时实现在社会环境语境下的受众生态身份的动态性建构。本研究以News Bank数据库的子数据库Special Reports中的环境新闻报道作为语料来源，建立小型环境新闻语篇语料库。语料的选取时间跨度为2010年至2019年，共923篇环境新闻报道。基于自建环境新闻语篇语料库，本研究应用数据分析软件NVivo对语料标注和编码，进行质性和量化分析。

研究发现，定位受众身份的语言资源主要涉及四类词汇语法资源，即指涉性资源、言据性资源、及物性资源和框架性资源。指涉性资源主要包括环境名词和指称代词，其中语料中出现频率最高的环境名词是表达生态环境知识性和情感性的环境词汇，这体现了环境新闻语篇是向受众传递环境信息和进行环境知识建构的重要载体。对指称代词的频率统计中，无论是排他性人称代词，还是包容性人称代词，分布都比较均衡。数据体现出在环境新闻语篇中，作者不仅要建构其权威性身份和立场，也要建构与受众的亲和关系，定位受众的生态身份。言据性资源主要由言据投射主体和投射过程来体现。对言据投射主体的频率统计中，环境学者和科研机构等学术信源占主要地位，这在一定程度上说明媒体认为学术观点比其他来源的观点更具说服力，更能取得公众的信任；对投射过程介入性资源的统计显示最常见的是收缩性话语资源，用来限制受众立场。及物性资源主要由参与者主体和及物过程来体现，对参与者主体的统计显示非人类行为主体的出现频率较高，说明非人类生物具有自身的生存和调节能力，并不依附于人类。非人类施事主体占比较高，这体现了非人类生物不仅自身具有生存能力，还作用于人类，与人类是生命共同体的关系。及物过程的评价意义统计显示，中性意义的过程动词占比最高，这体现了新闻语篇在词汇选择上注重客观性和事实性的特点。框架性资源包含商品框架、危机框架和问题框架这三大主要环境框架，其中出现频率最高的是危机框架。在这一叙事框架下，受众被置于危机中，从而被定位为自然的生命共同体和生态行动者。

环境新闻语篇中，受众生态身份的建构通过话语策略的定位机制来实现。研究发现，环境新闻语篇定位受众身份的话语策略包含概念化、客观化和视角化三个维度。概念化是引导受众实现对自然环境问题进行概念性建构的话语策略，主要由环境词汇和框架性资源来实现；客观化是指语篇作者寻求受众认同的话语策略，主要由排他性指称代词、言据性投射主体以及对话收缩资源来实现；视角化则是指通过语言资源的使用引导受众认识世界的方式和角度，主要体现在人称指称、参与者主体和框架资源的使用。在话语策略的运作下，环境新闻语篇实现了权威认同、认知导向、价值赋予和情感联结等定位受众身份的话语功能。基于环境新闻语篇的生态话语实践，在话语策略机制运作下，研究发现环境新闻语篇为受众建构了生态知识接受者、人类中心主义者和生命共同体这三种生态身份类型，其中人类中心主义者包含自然主宰者和生态破坏者这两类身份类型，生命共同体包含生态受益者、生态受害者、自然代言人和生态行动者这四类身份类型。

对环境新闻语篇受众生态身份定位的话语研究，有助于促进公众将身份作为社会资源行使环境权利，履行环保义务，在生态文明建设中进一步构建生态自我。因此，本研究不仅在生态话语秩序的重构、媒体和受众关系的重塑以及对公众的生态环保教育和生态价值建构等方面具有一定的研究贡献，而且在研究方法和研究方向上为后续的生态身份建构和生态话语分析提供了一定的参考价值。

Ecological identity is the result of discourse construction in the ecological discourse practice, and it is also an important part of people’s multiple social identities. Environmental protection is closely related to everyone’s life, so environmental news discourse is the type of news discourse with a wide audience. To explore the positioning of ecological identity of the audience is the key to understand how environmental news discourse writer endows himself, the audience and the natural environment with ecological meaning. However, there is little research on the identity construction of the environmental discourse subject, and even less discussion on the ecological identity construction of the audience.

With the Positioning Theory as the core, combining the discourse practice theory, the discourse construction view and the ecological philosophy view of Systemic Functional Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis and Ecolinguistics, this study establishes the audience ecological identity construction framework from the perspective of Positioning Theory. In this analytical framework, environmental news discourse writers integrate their ecological view into the discourse construction of environmental framework through the selection of language resources and the implementation of discourse strategies. This process is the process of the ecological discourse practice, and also the process in which the discourse implements its social force. Audiences are positioned in the ecological discourse practice, and at the same time, they need to follow the moral order and code of conduct endowed by the position, and implement their rights to use the nature rationally and the duties to protect the environment. In the process of implementing their rights and duties, audiences gradually turn from discourse consumers to discourse producers. Based on the choice of lexical grammar, audiences will reconstrue the natural environment and realize the cycle of ecological discourse practice and the dynamic construction of audiences’ ecological identity in the context of social environment. In this study, environmental news reports in Special Reports, a sub-database of the News Bank database, were used as the source of corpus to build a small environmental news discourse corpus. The corpus was selected between the years from 2010 to 2019, with a total of923 environmental news reports. Based on the self-built environmental news discourse corpus, this study applied the data analysis software NVivo to label and encode the corpus for qualitative and quantitative analysis.

It is found that the linguistic resources used to position audiences’ identity mainly involve four types of lexical grammatical resources, which are reference resources, evidentiality resources, transitivity resources and framing resources. Reference resources mainly include environmental nouns and referential pronouns, among which the most frequent environmental nouns in the corpus are environmental words that express the knowledge and sensibility of ecological environmental information, which reflects that environmental news discourse is an important carrier for conveying environmental information and constructing environmental knowledge for the audience. In the frequency statistics of referential pronouns, the distribution of both exclusive and inclusive personal pronouns is relatively balanced. The data show that in environmental news discourse, the author not only constructs his authoritative identity and position, but also constructs the affinity relationship with the audience and position the ecological identity of the audience. Evidentiality resources are mainly embodied by evidential projection subject and projection process. In the statistics of the occurrence frequency of evidential projection subjects, academic information sources such as environmental scholars and scientific research institutions occupy a dominant position, which indicates to some extent that the media believe that academic views are more convincing than those from other sources and can gain more trust from the public. In the statistics of engagement resources of the projection process, the data show that the most commonly used is the contract resources, which is used to restrict the audiences’ choice of position. The transitivity resources are mainly represented by the participants and processes. Statistics of the participants show that the occurrence frequency of non-human behavior participants is relatively high, indicating that non-human organisms have their own survival and regulation ability and are not dependent on human beings. Non-human agents account for a relatively high proportion, which reflects that non-human beings not only have their own surviving ability, but also can act on human beings and have a relationship of life community with human beings. According to the statistics of the evaluation meaning of transitivity processes, the neutral meaning of process verbs accounts for the highest proportion, which reflects the characteristics of the news discourse genre in terms of objectivity and fact. Framing resources include some main kinds of environmental frameworks. Statistics show that there are mainly commodity framework, crisis framework and problem framework in environmental news discourse, among which crisis framework appears most frequently. Under this narrative framework, the audience is placed in crisis, thus being positioned as a life community with the nature and ecological actor.

In environmental news discourse, the construction of audiences’ ecological identity is realized through the positioning mechanism of discourse strategies. It is found that the discourse strategies of environmental news discourses to position audiences’ identity are realized from three dimensions, which are conceptualization, objectification and perspectivism. Conceptualization is a discourse strategy that guides the audience to conceptually construct the natural environment and environmental problems mainly by environmental vocabulary and framing resources. Objectification refers to the discourse strategy that reflects the author’s intention of seeking audiences’ recognition in the discourse, which is mainly represented by exclusive referential pronouns, evidential projection subjects and contract resources. Perspectivism refers to the way and angle to guide the audience to understand the world through the use of language resources, which is mainly embodied in the use of personal reference, participant subject and framing resources. Under the operation of discourse strategies, environmental news discourses realize the discourse functions of positioning audience identity, such as authority recognition, cognitive orientation, value giving and emotional connection. Based on the ecological discourse practice of environmental news discourses, under the operation of discourse strategy mechanism, this research finds that environmental news discourses construct three ecological identity types for the audience, which are ecological knowledge receiver, anthropocentrist and life community. Anthropocentrist includes two identity types，which are nature master and ecological destroyer. The life community identity includes four types, which are ecological beneficiary, ecological victim, nature spokesperson and ecological actor.

The discourse research on the audience ecological identity of environmental news discourse is helpful to promote the public to use identity as social resources to exercise environmental rights and fulfill environmental protection duties, and further construct ecological self in the construction of ecological civilization. Therefore, this study not only contributes to the reconstruction of the ecological discourse order, the reshaping of the relationship between media and audience, and the public’s education on ecological environmental protection and the construction of ecological values, but also provides certain reference value for the subsequent studies of ecological identity construction and ecological discourse analysis in terms of research methods and research directions.