Do you ever wonder what has gone into the decision of what animals we eat and what animals we put on posters and in zoos for people to donate to?

Lauren Hines
Language in US Society (LING 1000)
Advisor- Meredith Church
LURA 2021

Do you ever wonder what has gone into the decision of what animals we eat and what animals we put on posters and in zoos for people to donate to? For many years we have eaten animals such as cows and pigs. We have become desensitized to the slaughtering of these animals as we look at them on our plates. Other animals such as pandas and giraffes we have put in zoos for others to look at and donate to. I want to analyze the effect that language has on the treatment of non-human animals.

As humans, we see ourselves as dominant over other species. We have normalized this dominance to the point where we control the life and death of nonhuman animals (Zengin, 2019). We see dominance portrayed in language when talking about or dismissing the cognitive abilities of these animals, changing their status based on how we perceive their feelings and thoughts. When talking about companion animals such as dogs and cats we use words like “loyal”, “loving”, and “curious” (Gunawan, 2018). However, when talking about our food we refer to them using words like “product” to remove the emotions from the consumer (Zengin, 2019). We also use references in day-to-day language such as metaphors: “we associate weasels with sneakiness, dogs with loyalty, lions with bravery, and pigs are associated with being dumb and ‘pests’, dirty and gross” (Gunawan, 2018). These associations impact our feelings towards these animals, which develops connections between humans and animals reinforces the power dynamics in people’s minds. 

Zoos use language in their marketing to create a wildlife experience where you can bond with the animals, helping their business. An example of this is the language the Denver Zoo uses on their website about “our zoo family”. This language instills a sense of connection and happiness and makes us forget that the animals are in a smaller enclosure with limited ability to exert their natural instincts (Exhibits). The zoos also establish more dominance by having the people name these animals and advertise the milestones of the animals, creating a connection and empathy with the visitor, which helps boost profit margins (Zengin, 2019). Additionally, zoos’ welfare laws show a disparity in the treatment between farm and zoo animals (Brando, 2014). Often these farmed animals that are fed to the visitors do not hold up to those same animal welfare laws. They are usually factory farmed animals that are not given the same means to thrive as the zoo animals because of the impact of the language and power dynamics when talking about them.

When looking at the farming industry, the language used to degrade these animals to food is very apparent, as well as the language used to normalize the slaughter of these animals for our gain. We can see this as the words used to describe them go beyond “corpses”, instead describing them as their use for food, such as a “T-bone” or “fillet” (Mitchell, 2013). These animals are said to have little process of pain, intelligence, or awareness, which supposedly makes up for the way that we stick them in cages where they can not move, castrate and inseminate them without anesthesia, and slaughter them for our gain. These animals become a “product” that we “buy and sell” to normalize the way that we treat them and make them become less of a living being in the process (Zengin, 2019). The discourse around “cage-free” animals and “happy meat” makes the consumers feel more comfortable eating these animals and separates them from the slaughter (Khazaal & Almiron, 2014). Also, media coverage of farming that sympathizes with the farmers having to slaughter these animals helps consumers not think about the animals (Khazaal & Almiron, 2014).

It is clear that the way that we talk about different animals impacts how we treat them. These actions have caused and continue to cause many animals to die. It begs us to look at different questions in the future; if the dynamics between humans and non-human animals are based on the way we talk about them, and this narrative influences our behaviors toward them, what would happen if we changed that narrative? Would we eat elephants instead of cows? If the media changed how they talked about this subject, would we be less desensitized to the slaughtering of some animals and not others? This would allow us to see more clearly the relationship we have with the non-human animal world in order to improve the treatment of these animals.

References

Brando, S. (2014). Eating Animals at the Zoo. Journal for Critical Animal Studies,12(1), 63-88. Exhibits. (n.d.). Retrieved December 05, 2020, from https://denverzoo.org/exhibits/

Gunawan, M. (2018). Navigating human and non-human animal relations: Okja, Foucault and animal welfare laws. Alternative Law Journal,43(4), 263-268. doi:10.1177/1037969x18802459

Khazaal, N., & Almiron, N. (2014). An Angry Cow is Not a Good Eating Experience. Journalism Studies,17(3), 374-391. doi:10.1080/1461670x.2014.982966

Mitchell, L. (2013). Farming: Animals or machines? Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies,31(3), 299-309. doi:10.2989/16073614.2013.837606

Zengin, S. E. (2019). Normalizing Human-Animal Power Relations Through Media: Zoo discourses in Turkey. Galatasaray Üniversitesi İleti-ş-im Dergisi, (31), 9-33. doi:10.16878/gsuilet.580339