Language, Nature, and the Framing of Death: An Ecolinguistic Analysis of Muneer Niazi’s Taiz Hawa Aur Tanha Phool

Abstract

This thesis explores how Urdu lyric poetry, in this case, Taiz Hawa Aur Tanha Phool by Muneer Niazi (1994), is important in solving the global environmental crisis by promoting localized environmental ethics in Pakistan. The study uses the Ecological Discourse Analysis (EDA) according to the six-part framework of Arran Stibbe (Identity, Ideology, Salience, Metaphor, Conviction, and Erasure) to systematically deconstruct the way Niazi uses language as a positive, ecocentric discourse. The study is based on a qualitative, constructivist-interpretivist design, which examines twenty purposively sampled poems to fulfill two main goals: to examine how identity, ideology, and salience facilitate eco-consciousness, and to examine how metaphor, conviction, and erasure re-brand human mortality as an ecological flow. The main thesis is that Niazi manages to create an ecocentric worldview through the active agency of non-human things (challenging erasure), the creation of strong cyclical metaphors, and the creation of a moral belief in interdependence. This discussion moves the study of Niazi beyond conventional social interpretations, using a global approach to non-Western lyrical poetry and providing a resource base to South Asian ecocriticism and environmental communication.