ECOLOGICAL PERSONIFICATION IN LUTSOTSO ENVIRONMENTAL DISCOURSE: A RELEVANCE-THEORETIC ANALYSIS

Abstract

The problems of ecology have now been recognized as not only scientific but also cultural and linguistic, and conveyed through discourse in the face of ecological crisis. This study examines how ecological personification is used as a cognitive-pragmatic resource in Lutsotso discourse to construct meaning and raise awareness about the environment. The study is based on Relevance Theory (1986, 2016) developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. The research was designed with a qualitative discourse analytic approach. The expressions of ecological personification were selected purposively from spoken interactions, storytelling, and eco-conversations among the Lutsotso speech community, yielding a total of 15 expressions. The expressions were chosen because they often described the natural world in a way that made it seem like a person and clearly expressed environmental issues that reflected the community's lived experience with the environment. Their selection was based on how often they appeared, their context, the inferential meaning they conveyed, and their representation of human attributes assigned to environmental elements. The selected expressions were then analysed in relation to the principles of Relevance Theory to examine how interlocutors derive other contextual and ecological interpretations from them. It was found that natural persons, including rivers, forests, soil, rain, lakes, grass, earth, and others, are often attributed with human emotions, memory, speech, intentions, and moral judgment. These personifications convey inferential meanings about environmental degradation, climate change, ecological trauma, moral responsibility, and conservation awareness. Ecological personification in the text of Lutsotso is not just a stylistic tool but a cultural and communication strategy that helps, among other things, deepen emotional involvement, cognitive interpretation, and environmental consciousness. The results suggest that indigenous ecological expressions need to be embedded in EE, communication, and governance processes. The study not only addresses issues in cognitive pragmatics, ecolinguistics, and environmental communication but also preserves indigenous knowledge systems for sustainable environmental management.