Introduction:
General tendencies representing social change can be discerned in contemporary institutional discourse. One of these, which goes along with the adoption of the capitalist free market as a model for all kinds of transactions, is a tendency for discourse genres, which were once primarily “informational” to become more “promotional” – they are no longer designed simply to “tell”, but also to sell…framing information in ways designed to appeal to the reader as a consumer
⎯ Deborah Cameron, Working with Spoken Discourse, 2001
Section: Overview of Project:
A growing amount of literature on the nonhuman animal rights movement and veganism has indicated that nonhuman animal rights organizations are advocating capitalist interests, making the movement about consumerism rather than anti-speciesism. The scholars contributing to this literature, have argued that without a deeper understanding of capitalism, nonhuman animal rights organizations will continue to focus more on increasing sales of “cruelty-free” products and less on combatting the speciesist attitudes responsible for the oppression of nonhuman animals that are inherent in a system that seeks to commodify everything in order to accumulate endless profit. In light of these arguments, this paper critically examines and compares the discourse of two nonhuman animal rights organizations, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and The Vegan Society, over the past ten years on their websites. More specifically, this study investigates whether or not the two organizations have promoted vegan consumerism as a primary form of activism and if their campaigns have shifted ideologically in terms of how they frame activism by examining what has happened and transformed textually. Although multi-faceted, there were recurring themes. The presentation and analysis of my findings demonstrate that PETA and The Vegan Society’s contemporary drives for nonhuman animal rights are through market-led initiatives that treat activists mainly as white middle-class consumers of “cruelty-free” products. In failing to incorporate how matters of race, gender, class, species and other social issues intersect with nonhuman animal rights, both groups fetishize consumption practices at the expense of the potential for nonhuman animal rights activism to be a transformative social justice practice. In sum, this paper suggests and shows how the discourse of PETA and The Vegan Society supports, reinforces, and feeds into a system that contributes to and profits off of class, racial, and gender inequality, as well as nonhuman animal and environmental exploitation. Furthermore, this project makes the case for more attention towards understanding the importance in interrogating the discourse surrounding contemporary activism. In looking for textual patterns and identifying the connections that the discourse makes among various social issues within and across each group’s website, we are able to see how language constructs and organizes meaning, enacts social and cultural perspectives and identities, and provides a pathway into ideological analysis and critique of contemporary social justice movements.
Section: Definition of Key Terms:
Before proceeding onto the theoretical underpinnings and methodologies that informed this research, I will define some of the key terms utilized throughout the paper that are pertinent to understanding nonhuman animal rights activism, and briefly explain the histories of the movement, PETA, and The Vegan Society. Perhaps most notable will be the usage of the term “nonhuman animal” in place of simply using “animal”, except when directly quoting excerpts that do not use “nonhuman animal”. I use this term in solidarity with other scholars and activists writing on nonhuman animal activism who recognize the biological similarities humans share with nonhuman animals and who acknowledge the fact that humans, too, are animals. Oftentimes, we structure our language to avoid acknowledgement of this fact in order to draw social and moral boundaries between ourselves and other species. These boundaries are what help us enact genuine instances of prejudice over other