Grammatical Trusteeship: Semiotic Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Post-Anthropocentric Law in the Te Awa Tupua Act 2017
Identification
- Public canonical key
- doi:10.65826/cenraps.8.2.2026.191
- Authors
- Imran Hossain Sayel · Mohammad Golam Mohiuddin · Mehedi Hasan
- Reported year
- 2026
- Reported language
- en
- Source type
- article
- First detected
- 2026-11-09T19:04:47.675450+00:00
- Last metadata observation
- 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
- Last HTTP verification
- Not checked
Institutions reported by the source
Green University of Bangladesh · Universiti Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah
Reported affiliation countries
BD · MY
Documentary abstract — original language
Scholarly optimism over the global proliferation of Rights of Nature legislation systematically overlooks how legal grammar functionally grants or withholds these rights. This paper introduces "grammatical trusteeship", a structural semiotic condition where human agents serve as indispensable grammatical mediators of non-human personhood, reinstating anthropocentric ontology syntactically even when legislative intent nominally dismantles it in policy. Grounded in Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter, this study applies a corpus-driven Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) transitivity analysis to 147 clauses from the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017, cataloguing Material, Mental, Relational, and Verbal processes alongside the river's participant roles. Findings reveal Te Awa Tupua is positioned as Goal, Phenomenon, or Carrier in 76.2% of clauses, but as Actor or Senser in only 8.8%. This asymmetry constitutes a textual regime conditioning the river's legal personhood upon continuous human activation, narration, and representation. Exposing the disjuncture between the Act's decolonial ontological ambitions and colonial grammatical architecture, this paper argues that post-anthropocentric law requires a grammatical reorientation in encoding ecological agency, not merely new legislative intent. The study contributes a replicable analytical methodology to Environmental Humanities and intervenes in debates on the performative efficacy of Rights of Nature frameworks.
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.65826/cenraps.8.2.2026.191
- OPENALEX
- W7204235979
- OPENAIRE
- doi_________::b4be072babe5f6ced0b389e08a0f16e2
Documentary context
- Documentary family
- Scholarship
- Source-reported types
- Article · article
- Natural entities mentioned
- River
Entity mentions are not evidence of legal recognition. Jurisdiction studied is separate from author affiliation country.
Sources
OpenAIRE · Record 1
OpenAlex · Record 1 · Record 2
Documented bibliographic relations
Source-declared references and links; they do not establish legal support or UGLC qualification. Up to 20 outgoing references are displayed.
- openalex:w2164777277 · CITES
- openalex:w2767200912 · CITES
- Creating legal rights for rivers: Lessons from Australia, New Zealand, and India · CITES
- A geomorphic perspective on the rights of the river in Aotearoa New Zealand · CITES
- openalex:w2918450217 · CITES
- When a River Becomes a Person · CITES
- Māori ways of speaking: Code-switching in parliamentary discourse, Māori and river identity, and the power of Kaitiakitanga for conservation · CITES
- Stop drinking the waipiro! A critique of the government's ‘why’ behind Te Mana o te Wai · CITES
- openalex:w4225533686 · CITES
- Nature as a sentient being: Can rivers be legal persons? · CITES
- Beyond legal personhood for the Whanganui River: collaboration and pluralism in implementing the Te Awa Tupua Act · CITES
- openalex:w4393153219 · CITES
- Rights of nature, an ornamental legal framework: water extractivism and backbone rivers with rights in Colombia · CITES
- openalex:w4400693858 · CITES
- openalex:w4402236160 · CITES
- openalex:w4403333451 · CITES
- The Rights of Nature Movement: Legal, Cultural, and Policy Challenges in Implementing Eco-Centric Laws · CITES
- openalex:w4414419055 · CITES
- openalex:w4417297018 · CITES
- openalex:w7117547467 · CITES
0 incoming references within the detected corpus
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Cite this reference
Imran Hossain Sayel; Mohammad Golam Mohiuddin; Mehedi Hasan. Grammatical Trusteeship: Semiotic Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Post-Anthropocentric Law in the Te Awa Tupua Act 2017. 2026. https://doi.org/10.65826/cenraps.8.2.2026.191
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- APA
- Imran Hossain Sayel; Mohammad Golam Mohiuddin; Mehedi Hasan. (2026). Grammatical Trusteeship: Semiotic Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Post-Anthropocentric Law in the Te Awa Tupua Act 2017. https://doi.org/10.65826/cenraps.8.2.2026.191
- Chicago
- Imran Hossain Sayel; Mohammad Golam Mohiuddin; Mehedi Hasan. Grammatical Trusteeship: Semiotic Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Post-Anthropocentric Law in the Te Awa Tupua Act 2017. 2026. https://doi.org/10.65826/cenraps.8.2.2026.191
- ISO 690
- Imran Hossain Sayel; Mohammad Golam Mohiuddin; Mehedi Hasan. Grammatical Trusteeship: Semiotic Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Post-Anthropocentric Law in the Te Awa Tupua Act 2017. 2026. https://doi.org/10.65826/cenraps.8.2.2026.191
UDTR Global Rights of Nature Legal Library. Grammatical Trusteeship: Semiotic Anthropocentrism and the Limits of Post-Anthropocentric Law in the Te Awa Tupua Act 2017. Documentary record: https://www.declarationuniverselledesdroitsdelarbre.org/global-rights-of-nature-radar/reference/r-d3b202125823bbb4d6d76a8eb626afba/ · Last HTTP verification: not performed
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Version a8fe28816d29e40c · udtr-reference-1.1.2
- Title
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:42.203690+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00 - Authors
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:42.203690+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
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- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:42.203690+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00 - Identifiers
- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:42.203690+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
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- OpenAIRE · source · 2026-11-09T19:06:42.203690+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00 - Source-reported author ORCID
- OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
OpenAlex · source · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
History tracks record metadata and does not certify the state of the law.
7f2d54644f835a9d · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
b8878c8acc267f02 · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
802fa24e57b0c7bd · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
a8fe28816d29e40c · 2026-11-09T19:17:40.315837+00:00
Research dossiers and documentary relations
Green University of Bangladesh
Universiti Malaysia Pahang Al-Sultan Abdullah
Source roles
Discovery source · https://doi.org/10.65826/cenraps.8.2.2026.191
Discovery source · https://openalex.org/W7204235979
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