How We Talk About Animals, and Why it Matters
The Power of Discourse
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:13th Nov '25
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Demonstrates how animals are represented in contemporary English, drawing on data from a wide range of genres and contexts.
What kind of language do we use to name and describe the animals that feature in our lives? What names do we give to animals as individuals and groups, and how do these influence our perceptions of them? How do our descriptions of different species overlap with the words we use about categories of people?
Answering these questions and more, this book presents evidence from an extensive research project into how animals are represented in contemporary English. It draws on a multi-million word corpus of texts from a wide range of sources, as well as interviews with professional communicators about animals and focus groups involving people with different experiences of, and attitudes towards, animals in various contexts. Language about animals is explored thematically, focusing on topics such as names, descriptions, places, communication and ethics. The book highlights both what we know from scientific research about the huge diversity of animals’ capacities and lifestyles, and how the language we use to communicate about them affects how we understand them and how we treat them. The methods used to investigate these topics include corpus linguistic analysis, using specialised software, as well as close reading of specific examples.
Providing a fascinating insight into the way we talk about animals, this book brings together new material from scientific studies and popular culture to explore the relationships between humans and other animals. It will appeal to a wide readership in light of the climate crisis and awareness of the loss of biodiversity both globally and locally.
This book explores the many ways animals are portrayed through the analysis of actual language use from sites such as advertisements, legislation, academic journals, interviews, focus groups, and more. Drawing upon this rich language data, Sealey explores how animals are named, evaluated, represented, and perceived and why it all matters. Comprehensive yet accessible, this book will appeal to readers from many backgrounds. * Robert Poole, Associate Professor, The University of Alabama, USA *
A timely and compelling account of how the way humans talk about animals has a decisive impact on how animals are viewed and treated. At a crucial moment in human engagement with the more-than-human world it would be difficult to overstate the importance of this meticulously researched volume in terms of how we develop a more knowing and genuinely transformative relationship with our fellow animals. * Michael Cronin, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland *
How We Talk About Animals, and Why It Matters is a thoughtful, well-organised and engaging contribution to the study of language and human-animal relations … The book would make a valuable addition to postgraduate reading lists and an effective companion to more overtly critical ecolinguistic texts, offering a complementary perspective rich in information and ecological sentiment. * Discourse & Society *
How We Talk About Animals and Why It Matters is an important, highly readable, and methodologically versatile contribution to linguistic research on animal discourse … Thanks to its engaging argumentation and wealth of concrete language examples, it is suitable not only for researchers in ecolinguistics, discourse analysis, and Human-Animal Studies, but also for university teaching. * Apropos *
A review cannot do justice to the wealth of issues and findings in this volume … [it] is a must-read for anyone who is interested in discourse on animals, views of the world and the place of humans, perhaps especially specialists in disciplines other than linguistics and the general public. * Linguist List *
This is a book that deserves many readers from academic and non-academic fields and backgrounds. I would strongly recommend it to students looking to include animals in a linguistic or literary research project. Moreover, anyone curious about how we talk about animals, or indeed, anyone interested in the English language, will find something new and fascinating in this book. * Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism *
ISBN: 9781350519619
Dimensions: 238mm x 162mm x 22mm
Weight: 540g
256 pages