Arran Stibbe1
Language, Power and the Social Construction of
Animals
ABSTRACT
This paper describes how language contributes to the oppression and exploitation of animals by animal product industries.
Critical Discourse Analysis, a framework usually applied in countering racism and sexism, is applied to a corpus of texts taken
from animal industry sources.The mass confinement and slaughter of animals in intensive farms depend on the implicit consent
of the population, signaled by its willingness to buy animal products produced in this way. Ideological assumptions embedded
in everyday discourse and that of the animal industries manufacture and maintain this consent. Through analysis of texts, this
paper attempts to expose these assumptions and discusses
implications for countering the domination and exploitation of
animals.
There has recently been what Fairclough (1992, p. 2)
calls a “linguistic turn” in social theory, where language is “being accorded a more central role within
social phenomena.” Describing social construction,
Burr (1995) writes, “language itself provides us with
a way of structuring our experience of ourselves and
the world” (p. 33). The role of language in power
relations, particularly, has been closely examined
(Chimombo & Roseberry, 1998; Van Dijk, 1997; Fairclough, 1989, 1992; Hodge & Kress, 1993; Fowler,
1991).
Society & Animals 9:2 (2001)
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2001
Most of this work on language and power focuses on the role of discourse
in oppression and exploitation. For example, the journal Discourse and Society
is dedicated to “power, dominance and inequality and to the role of discourse
in their legitimization and reproduction in society, for instance in the domains
of gender, race, ethnicity, class or world religion” (Discourse and Society, Aims
and Scope). However, with rare exceptions such as Kheel’s (1995) discussion
of the discourse of hunting, the role of discourse in the domination by humans
of other species has been almost completely neglected. Power is talked about as
if it is a relation between people only. Fairclough (1992) describes how “language
contributes to the domination of some people [italics added] by others” (p. 64).
Despite the work of eco-feminists such as Adams (1990) and Kheel (1993,
p. 243), whose aim is “exposing the underlying mentality of exploitation that
is directed against women and nature [including animals]” sociology in general is only beginning to consider domination as it applies to animals. Berry
(1997) draws parallels between the “oppression of human minorities and
nonhuman animals” (p. 115), echoing Spiegel (1997), who made what she
called the “dreaded comparison” between human and non human slavery.
Such comparisons, although rare in sociological literature, form a fundamental
part of the animal rights movement and can be traced back at least to Singer
(1990), who wrote “the fundamental objections to racism . . . apply equally
to speciesism” (p. 6). This paper applies theories of language and power
that have been used in the analysis of racism, particularly Critical Discourse
Analysis, to the issue of the domination, oppression, and exploitation of animals by animal product industries.
Animals and Discourse
One of the main reasons that animals are excluded from discussions of language and power is that they are not, themselves, participants in their own
social construction through language. Because of the Marxist roots of Critical
Discourse Analysis, analysis focuses on hegemony, where oppression of a
group is carried out ideologically, rather than coercively, through the manufacture of consent (Fairclough, 1992). In animals, the power is completely
coercive, carried out by a few people involved in organizations that farm and
use animals. The animals do not consent to their treatment because of “false consciousness” generated through ideological assumptions contained in discourse.
146 Arran Stibbe
However, the coercive power used to oppress animals depends completely
on a consenting majority of the human population who, every time it buys
animal products, explicitly or implicitly agrees to the way animals are treated.
This consent can be withdrawn as has been demonstrated through boycotts
of veal, battery farm eggs, cosmetics tested on animals, and, by some, all animal products. It is in the manufacturing of consent within the human population for the oppression and exploitation of the animal population that
language plays a role.
Shotter (1993) uses the term “rhetorical-responsive” to describe how social
constructions exist, not in the minds of individual people but within the constant interaction and exchange of information in a society. In American society, there is what Kopperud (1993) calls “a pitched battle for the hearts and
minds of U.S. consumers” (p. 20) taking place between the meat industry
and animal activists. This ideological struggle occurs primarily through language and the media. Jones (1997) found that “Public opposition to both the
use of animals in scientific research and the killing of animals for fur increased
significantly following the high level of media coverage given . . .” (p. 73).
How animals are socially constructed influences how they are treated by
human society: “Cultural constructs determine the fate of animals” (Lawrence,
1994, p. 182). These “cultural constructs” are intimately bound up with language and discourse. Discourse “is a practice not just of representing the
world but of signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world
in meaning” (Fairclough, 1992, p. 64). From this perspective, discourse can
be considered a way of talking and writing about an area of knowledge or
social practice that both reflects and creates the structuring of the area.
Van Dijk (1997) considers ideology and social cognition the link between discourse and society. Authors vary in their use of the term “ideology.” One of
the classic senses of ideology is a mode of thought and practice “developed
by dominant groups in order to reproduce and legitimate their domination”
(van Dijk, p. 25). One of the ways this is accomplished is to present domination as “God-given, natural, benign [or] inevitable” (van Dijk, p. 25). In
van Dijk’s more generalized sense, this is just one kind of ideology, where
ideologies are “shared self-definitions of groups that allow group members
to co-ordinate their social practices in relation to other groups” (p. 26).
Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals 147
Rather than explicitly encouraging oppression and exploitation, ideology
often manifests itself more effectively by being implicit. This is achieved by
basing discourse on assumptions that are treated as if they were common
sense but which are, in fact, “common sense assumptions in the service of
sustaining unequal relations of power” (Fairclough, 1989, p. 84).
Ideologies, embedded and disseminated through discourse, influence the
individual mental representations of a society’s members, which in turn influence their actions. These mental representations are part of what van Dijk
(1997) calls “social cognition” (p. 27) because members of a society share them
through participation in, and exposure to, discourse. In the end, this social
cognition will influence which animal products people buy, how the meat
industry treats animals, and whether people actively campaign against the
oppression of animals.
Data
Animals play many roles in human society, including those of companion,
entertainer, food item, and commodity. Many discourses and ideologies influence how they are socially constructed. This paper focuses on discourses that
directly influence the welfare of large numbers of animals, particularly discourses related to large-scale animal product utilization.
A corpus of data was collected from a variety of different sources, all of which
were publicly available and, therefore, potentially influential. The corpus consists of (a) articles published in “internal” meat industry magazines such as
Poultry and Meat Marketing and Technology; (b) articles written by the meat
industry for external reading, such as justifying farming methods; and (c)
professional articles written by veterinarians specializing in food animals, lawyers
involved in the defense of product manufacturers, and other interested parties.
In addition to the specialist discourses that appear in the corpus, mainstream
discourse is also discussed. The data come from personal observation and
consultation of general dictionaries, idiom dictionaries, and grammar books.
Methodology
The method used to analyze the data is a form of critical discourse analysis
(CDA) (Chilton & Schäffner, 1997; van Dijk, 1993; Fairclough, 1992, 1989;
148 Arran Stibbe
Fowler, 1991; Hodge & Kress, 1993) combined with Potter’s (1996) theory of
fact construction. CDA provides “an account of the role of language, language use, discourse or communicative events in the (re)production of dominance and inequality” (van Dijk, 1993, p. 282). It does this by performing
detailed linguistic analysis of discourses to expose embedded ideologies.
Chilton and Schäffner (1997) provide an explicit methodology for CDA aimed
at “interpretively linking linguistic details . . . to the strategic political functions of coercion, resistance, opposition, protest, dissimulation, legitimisation
and delegitimisation” (p. 226). Their methodology echoes that of Fairclough
(1992, 1989), focusing on the analysis of linguistic features such as vocabulary, grammar, textual structures, and punctuation to reveal hidden ideological assumptions on which discourse is based.
This process of revealing “common sense” assumptions can be important
because, as Fairclough (1989) writes, “If one becomes aware that a particular aspect of common sense is sustaining power inequalities at one’s own
expense, it ceases to be common sense, and may cease to have the capacity
to sustain power inequalities” (p. 85).
The following discussion, based on detailed analysis of the data mentioned
above, is aimed at answering the following question: How does language,
from the level of pragmatics and semantics down to syntax and morphology,
influence how animals are socially constructed and, hence, treated by human
society?
Discussion
Mainstream Discourse
Singer (1990) describes the way that “The English language, like other languages, reflects the prejudices of its users” (p. vi). As an example, he gives
the word, “animal,” which, in contrast to its use in scientific discourse, often
excludes human beings from its semantic extension. It is usual to talk about
“animals and people” or to say, “there are no animals here” when there are,
in fact, people. This semantic classification can contribute to oppression by
reproducing “outgroup social psychology . . . which distances us from, and
prevents us from seeing, animal suffering” (Shapiro, 1995, p. 671).
Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals 149
Other linguistic mechanisms that distance us from animal suffering occur at
the lexical level: “The very words we use conceal its [meat’s] origin, we eat
beef, not bull . . . and pork, not pig . . .” (Singer, 1990, p. 95). We also wear
leather made from hide, not skin, and eat a carcass, not a corpse. As Shapiro
(1995, p. 671) points out, “We do not say ‘please pass the cooked flesh’.”
Meat is meat, with very different connotations from circumlocutions with the
same meaning such as “bits of the dead bodies of animals.” BBC news exploited
the shock value of such circumlocutions during the “BSE crisis” when reporting that cattle were being fed “mashed up cows.”
Killing, too, is lexicalized differently for humans and animals: Animals are
slaughtered, humans are murdered. Interchanging these two - You murdered
my pet hamster - is comical. The refugees were slaughtered means that they were
killed brutally, uncaringly, and immorally.
Animals are represented in language not only as different but also as inferior, the two conditions necessary for oppression. Conventional metaphors,
which Lakoff and Johnson (1999) claim have a strong influence on our everyday thinking, are overwhelmingly negative to animals. Examples include the
following: You greedy pig; ugly dog; stupid cow; bitch; you are so catty; crowing
over your achievements; you chicken; stop monkeying around; you big ape (Leach,
1964; Palmatier, 1995). These examples contain nouns, adjectives, and verbs
that have become polysemous through metaphorical extension in ways negative to animals. The use of animal names as insults is based on, and reproduces, an ideology in which animals are considered inferior.
Idioms that refer to animals also tend to describe negative situations or contain images of cruelty. Consider dogs: sick as a dog, dying like a dog, dog’s dinner, it’s a dog’s life, working like a dog, going to the dogs. And cats: cat on hot
bricks, not enough room to swing a cat, a cat in hell’s chance, running like a scalded
cat. And larger animals: flogging a dead horse, the straw that broke the camel’s
back, talking the hind legs of a donkey. The only positive animal idioms seem
to be those describing wild birds and insects: an early bird, in fine feather, feathering your nest, being as free as a bird, happy as a lark, wise as an owl; and snug
as a bug in a rug, chirpy as a cricket, as fit as a flea, the bees knees. Although
there are exceptions, the pattern is clear: The closer the relation of dominance
of a particular species by humans, the more negative the stereotypes contained in the idioms of mainstream discourse.
150 Arran Stibbe
The ideological positioning of animals extends into syntax as well. When
animals die, they change, in a way that humans do not, from objects to substance, count nouns to mass nouns. It is possible to say some chicken, some
lamb, or some chicken leg, but some human and some human leg are ungrammatical. Singer (1990) is surprised that while we disguise the origin of pig
meat by calling it pork, we “find it easier to face the true nature of a leg of
lamb” (p. 95). However, there is a clear grammatical difference: We cannot
say a leg of person; instead, we say a person’s leg. Expressing the lamb example similarly (tonight we are going to eat a lamb’s leg) does not hide the origin
in the same way.
Another context in which animals change from count nouns to mass nouns
is “on safari.” Whether the participants are carrying guns or cameras, the
way of talking about animals is the same: They say we saw giraffe, elephant,
and lion, instead of we saw giraffes, elephants, and lions. Using mass nouns
instead of count nouns removes the individuality of the animals, with the
ideological assumption that each animal is just a replaceable representative
of a category. Lawrence (1994) writes, “If there are no differences among
members of a group, their value and importance are greatly diminished so
that it is easier to dislike them and to justify their exploitation and destruction” (p. 180).
Pronoun use can lead to the kind of us and them division similar to that found
in racist discourse, with us referring to humans and them to animals. Even
in the animal rights literature, the pronouns we, us, and our usually are used
exclusively, that is, referring only to humans. Perhaps the strongest animal
rights campaigner of all, Regan (1996), writes, “We want and prefer things . . .
our enjoyment and suffering . . . make[s] a difference to the quality of our
lives as lived . . . by us as individuals.” This seems to be an inclusive use of
us, we, and our until the next sentence is read: “[T]he same is true of . . .
animals . . .” (p. 37).
The common way of referring to animals as it rather than him or her objectifies them. Objects can be bought, sold, and owned, a lexical set used routinely
in everyday conversation when talking about animals. This reveals the common sense assumption that animals are property. It is semantically deviant
to talk about someone’s owning another human, unless the term is used
metaphorically, when it refers to immoral and unfair domination.
Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals 151
Spender (1998) shows how mainstream discourse, evolving in a maleoriented society, both reflects and reproduces bias against women. In the
same way, it is not surprising to find that discourse evolving in a predominantly meat-eating culture reflects negative attitudes toward animals. The
extent to which this influences people to condone exploitation is uncertain,
but mainstream discourse is reinforced by the discourses of groups which
have ideological interests in justifying the utilisation of animals.
The Discourses of the Animal Products Industries
One type of ideology, as mentioned above, presents oppression as being “Godgiven, natural, benign, [or] inevitable” (Van Dijk, 1997, p. 25). Oppression of
animals is often justified quite literally as “God given” through the much
quoted verse from Genesis (1:28) where God gives humans ‘dominion’ over
animals. The animal products industry, however, does not use the discourse
of religion. Instead, it uses the discourse of science, among others, to make
oppression appear natural and inevitable (Sperling, 1988).
To make the intensive farming and slaughter of animals appear natural, the
discourse of evolutionary biology is often invoked to equate the behavior
with that of predators in the wild. To illustrate the workings of this discourse,
the following three paragraphs present a critical analysis of an article written
by Ott (1995), a writer who has connections with the meat industry and who
is a specialist in the industry-relevant field of bovine reproduction.
After explicitly declaring, “people are animals,” Ott (1995) uses collocations
such as “the human animal” and “animals other than human beings” (pp.
1023, 1024) to emphasize a semantic classification in which, unlike mainstream discourse, humans are included in the category of “animals.” Ott also
directly includes humans in the category “predator”.
The natural relationship between predator and prey is congruent with
neither an egalitarian or an animal rights viewpoint. (Ott, p. 1024)
This treats as common sense the assumption that what applies to the nonhuman animal situation of predation is the same as that which applies to the
human. However, prototypical members of the category “predators” are lions
152 Arran Stibbe
and tigers, and humans are non-prototypical members (Rosch, 1975). The
deliberate inclusion of non-prototypical members (humans) in general statements about prototypical ones (lions) hides important differences between
the situation of lions’ hunting their prey (which no one would argue is unethical) and intensive farming of thousands of animals in cramped conditions.
Differences, such as the fact that lions benefit the gene pool of their prey
whereas selective breeding for meat quantity damages it, are thereby conveniently hidden.
Potter (1996) shows how claims to scientific objectivity are used to “work up
the facticity of a version” (pp. 112-113). Ott (1995) presents his claims as
“biological principles,” “biological rules,” and “scientific knowledge” based
on “biological evidence” (pp. 1023-1025), while the animal rights movement’s
claims are “beliefs,” “fantasies,” “philosophical musings,” “dogma,” “the
wrong view,” and “false” (pp. 1023-1029). Ott almost never hedges with terms
such as “might be,” “probably,” or “can be seen as.” Instead, the modality
throughout the paper presents what Potter (1996) terms, “solid, unproblematic, and quite separate from the speaker” (p. 112).
While the discourse of evolutionary biology presents animal oppression as
“natural” and “inevitable,” different discourses use different semantic
classifications to make it appear ‘benign.’:
Modern animal housing is well ventilated, warm, well-lit, clean and
scientifically designed . . . . Housing protects animals from predators,
disease and bad weather . . . . (Harnack, 1996, p. 130).
Here, the semantic extension of predators does not include human predators
such as the farmer, from whom the housing offers no protection. This ‘ontological gerrymandering’ (Potter, 1996, p. 186) makes wild animals seem the
enemy of domestic animals, with humans their protectors. As Garner (1998)
points out, “Agribusiness interests often disguise the grim realities of factory
farming and proclaim their concern for animal welfare ” (p. 463). This can
be seen in the language used in the quotation above. The euphemism “housing” is used in place of cage, and the five positive qualities of the “housing”
follow one after other in a list - a grammatical pattern used by real estate
agents to describe a desirable residence.
Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals 153
Like many of the properties described by real estate agents, alternative, less
euphemistic ways can describe the same accommodation. For example,
compare “Modern animal housing is . . . well-lit” with “Crammed into tiny
cages with artificial lighting . . .” (Harnack, 1996, p. 136). Compare “well
ventilated, warm, . . . clean” (Harnack, p. 136) with “[T]he heat mixed with
the ammonia and dust in the houses causes incredible health problems ”
(Bowers, 1997a).
Even punctuation is used for ideological ends. The quotation marks in the following extract from a dairy industry journal attempt to distance intensive
farming from the image of a factory: “people concerned about animal welfare . . . may have seen a sensational news story about the abuse of animals
or about ‘factory farms’” (Knowlton and Majeskie, 1995, p. 449).
Although the external discourse of animal industries presents the treatment
of animals as benign, internal discourse has a different ideological objective.
Here the aim seems to be to encourage workers to neglect suffering and focus
on profit. Fiddes (1991, p. 200) describes how the industry “regards care for
their animal raw materials as little more than a commercial oncost.” An indication of this can be found in the archives of the industry magazines Poultry
and Meat Marketing and Technology (www.mtgplace.com). Within these archives,
items in the lexical set “pain, suffering, hurt(ing)” - with reference to animals are mentioned in 3, 2, and zero articles, respectively. On the other hand, items
in the lexical set “money, financial, profit” are mentioned in 224, 101, and 90
articles, respectively.
Hidden assumptions that make the suffering of animals appear unimportant
can be found in the linguistic devices used in the discourse of the meat industries. One of these devices is metonymy, “one of the basic characteristics
of cognition” (Lakoff, 1987, p. 77). Examples (emphases added) include the
following quotations:
1. Catching broilers is a backbreaking, dirty and unpleasant job (Bowers,
1997a).
2. [There is] susceptibility to ascites and flipover . . . in the female breeder
(Shane, 1995).
3. There’s not enough power to stun the beef . . . you’d end up cutting its
head off while the beef was still alive (Eisnitz, 1997, p. 216).
4. Exciting times for beef practitioners (Herrick, 1995, p. 1031).
154 Arran Stibbe
In (1) live birds are named and referred to by a cooking method, in (2) by
their function, in (3) cows are referred to by their dead flesh, and in (4)
veterinarians specializing in bovine medicine are called “beef practitioners”
rather than “cow practitioners.” These references to animals focus attention
away from their individuality and contribute to what Regan (1996) calls “the
system that allows us to view animals as our resources” (p. 36).
The discourse of resources is frequently used in direct reference to live animals as well as dead ones. Examples are the word damage instead of injury
in the expression “bird damage” (Bowers, 1997b), product instead of bodies
in “product is 100 percent cut-up and deboned” (Bowers) and destruction and
batch in, “Isolation of salmonella will result in the destruction of the flock . . .
[or] slaughter of the batch” (Shane, 1995). The discourse of resources also
includes metaphors, from dead metaphors such as “livestock” to novel
metaphors such as the “animal are plants” metaphor evident in “an automatic broiler harvesting machine” (Bowers, 1997a) and “How hogs are handled before stunning and harvesting has plenty to do with the quality of meat”
(“Proper treatment,” 1995). Since inanimate resources cannot suffer, the discursive construction of animals as resources contributes to an ideology that
disregards suffering.
When events that include suffering are described and talked about, nominalization is frequently used to hide agency (Fairclough, 1989, p. 124). An
example of this is, “Catcher fatigue, absenteeism and turnover can effect broken bones and bruises that reduce processing yields” (Bowers, 1997a). This
sentence describes incidents where animals are injured. But the actual animals are not mentioned. This is accomplished through the nominalizations
broken bones (X breaks Y’s bone) and bruises (X bruises Y), which allow the
patient, Y, to be deleted. The agent, X, in this case the “catcher,” is also deleted,
appearing only indirectly as a modifier in the noun phrase “catcher fatigue,”
which forms part of the agent of the verb “effect” rather than “break.” This distances deliberate human action from animal injuries. In addition, the results of
the injuries are not mentioned in terms of pain or suffering, but in terms of “yields.”
The same pattern can be seen in the following sentence: "Carcass damage
from handling and bird struggle during the kill does occur in broilers" (Bowers,
1997b). There are three nominalizations here: “damage” (X damages Y),
Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals 155
“handling” (X handles Y) and “the kill” (X kills Y). These three hide both the
agent and the patient, who appears only as a modifier in the expressions
“bird damage” and “bird struggle.” In addition, the resultant injuries to what
are clearly live, struggling animals are expressed in terms of damage to the
dead “carcass.”
Singer (1990, p. 50) points out that “detachment is made easier by the use of
technical jargon that disguises the real nature of what is going on.” This can
be seen in the following quotation:
Perdigo’s Marau plant processes 4.95-pound broilers at line speeds of 136
bpm, running 16 hours per day. . . . Perdigo previously used a stunning
method more similar to US [sic] standards: 45 mA/bird (60hz) for a seven second duration with water bath. However, these stunning parameters induced
pectoral muscle contraction that resulted in blood splash. (Bowers, 1997b).
Here, birds become units in the mathematically expressed parameters “136
bpm” (birds per minute) and “45 mA/bird.” And it is these “stunning parameters” that are the agent of the verb “induced”. Thus, responsibility for
causing convulsions so strong that they cause bleeding is being placed on
parameters rather than on the electrocution or the people instigating it.
One final linguistic device that can be used to encourage the disregard of
animal suffering is extended metaphor, which, as Johnson (1983) shows, can
influence reasoning patterns. The following is a famous example of a meat
industry metaphor:
The breeding sow should be thought of as, and treated as, a valuable piece
of machinery whose function is to pump out baby pigs like a sausage
machine. (Coats, 1989, p. 32).
This encourages metaphorical reasoning along the lines of “machines do not
have feelings;” therefore “pigs do not have feelings” and “valuable machines
should be utilised as much as possible;” therefore, “pigs should be utilised
as much as possible.” The results of this reasoning pattern can be seen in
Coats’s (1989) description of pig farming: “The sow must produce the maximum number of live piglets in the shortest time . . . . No regard is paid for
the distress and suffering caused by these continual pregnancies ” (p. 34).
156 Arran Stibbe
Conclusion
Using the methods of critical discourse analysis, this paper analyzed a number of materials in an investigation of the connection between language,
power, and the oppression of animals. The ultimate aim of such analyses is
to describe and challenge relations of domination and exploitation. Fairclough
(1992) describes how dominant ideologies that reproduce and maintain oppression can be resisted and how social change can come about through opposing discourses.
The animal rights movement, as it exists today, provides a discourse that
opposes oppression. Animal rights authors frequently counter the classifications of mainstream discourse by using terms such as “nonhuman animal,”
and “other-than-human animal.” They also use inclusive terms such as “being”
in, “If a being suffers there can be no moral justification for refusing to take
that suffering into consideration” (Singer 1990, p. 8). This is the same “humans
are animals” semantic classification used in biological discourse to argue
against animal rights. However, in this case the similarities drawn are different, focusing on animals’ ability to suffer and feel pain in the same way
that humans can.
As the following examples show, the animal rights movement is aware of the
power of language and makes deliberate attempts to change language:
1. We chose [pets] and most likely bought them in a manner similar to the
way in which human slaves were once . . . bought and sold . . . Keeping
the term pets recognises this hierarchy of ownership. . . . (Belk, 1996).
2. The blade is electrically heated and cauterizes the blood vessels as it snips
off about one fourth of the beak. The chicken industry characterizes this
procedure as “beak trimming” as if it’s little more than a manicure. (Marcus,
1998, p. 103).
3. When animals are considered to be “tools,” a certain callousness toward
them becomes apparent. Consider, for instance, Harlow and Suomi’s mention of their “rape rack” and the jocular tone in which they report on the
“favorite tricks” of the female monkeys . . . (Singer, 1990, p. 50).
4. “. . . [R]oad kills”: I do not believe that humans . . . should refer to innocent, defenceless victims . . . in such an insensitive, impersonal way. . . . I
believe that the term “road-kill” should be stricken from our vocabulary.
(Appel, 2000, p. 83).
Language, Power and the Social Construction of Animals 157
These examples focus on individual words. This paper has shown that not
only individual words contribute to the domination and oppression of
animals. Instead, language at all levels - from the morphological changes that
create the metonymy “broiler” from “broil”, through punctuation, semantic
classification schemes, grammatical choices, and pronoun usage to metaphor
are systematically related to underlying ideologies that contribute to maintaining and reproducing oppression.
The external discourses of animal product industries contain hidden ideological assumptions that make animal oppression seem “inevitable, natural
and benign.” The internal discourses encourage pain and suffering to be disregarded for the sake of profit. It is not only, therefore, at the level of words
that animal activists can attempt to oppose discourses of oppression but also
at all linguistic levels that make up discourse.
Van Dijk (1993) describes how critical discourse analysts take the perspective
of “. . . those who suffer most from dominance and inequality. . . . Their problems are . . . serious problems that effect the wellbeing and lives of many ”
(p. 253). In terms of the sheer number of sentient beings suffering and the
impact that intensive farming has on their lives from birth to slaughter, non
human animals cannot be excluded. This paper has attempted to show that
language is relevant to the oppression of animals and can be an appropriate
area of research for critical discourse analysis.
*
Arran Stibbe, Chikushi Jogakuen University
Note
1
Correspondence should be sent to Arran Stibbe, Department of English, Chikushi Jogakuen University, 2-12-1 Ishizaka, Dazaifu 818-0192, Japan. E-mail:
arran@earth.email.ne.jp
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