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A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Animals Farmed Series in the Guardian “It Would Be Kinder to Shoot Them” A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Animals Farmed Series in The Guardian Lukas Leitinger Supervisor: Núria Almiron Academic Year: 2019/20 Research project of the MA in International Studies in Media, Power, and Difference Department of Communication Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona Abstract This study conducted a critical discourse analysis on the Animals farmed series in The Guardian. To this end, the messages of the 196 articles from the launch of the series until April 20, 2020 and 8 articles from outside the series were analysed. Predominantly, the language of the series reinforces animal oppression by only asking how, not if, we should farm nonhuman animals. Some articles in the series show farmed animals’ suffering and workers’ ethical dilemmas, yet thorough challenges to animal oppression were only found outside the series. Thus, the study identified an underlying welfarist ideology throughout Animals farmed. Additionally, this study conducted a political economy analysis to explore the economic pressures behind the series. This analysis revealed links to the animal industry and philanthropy, which helps explain the findings. With these findings, the study contributes to critical animal and media studies and to journalism fighting animal oppression. Keywords: farmed animals, animal oppression, newspapers, critical animal and media studies, critical discourse analysis, political economy, philanthropy Type of Project: Research Report 2 Table of contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................... 4 1.2 History of animal farming ................................................................................................... 5 1.3 Case ........................................................................................................................................ 8 2 Theoretical Framework .................................................................................................... 9 2.1 Farmed animal oppression & lives ..................................................................................... 9 2.2 Animal oppression and animal welfare ............................................................................ 12 2.3 Animal oppression and language ...................................................................................... 13 2.4 Political economy and philanthropy ................................................................................. 14 2.5 Critical discourse analysis ................................................................................................. 15 2.6 Literature review ................................................................................................................ 16 3 Methodology .................................................................................................................... 19 3.1 Problem statement and research questions ..................................................................... 19 3.2 Sample ................................................................................................................................. 19 3.3 Data collection methods ..................................................................................................... 20 3.4 Data analysis procedures and methods ............................................................................ 21 3.5 Ethical issues and limitations ............................................................................................ 22 4 Results ............................................................................................................................. 23 4.1 Reinforcing animal oppression - welfarist ideology ........................................................ 23 4.1.1 How, not if, we should farm nonhuman animals ........................................................................... 23 4.1.2 Suppression of farmed animals’ perspectives ............................................................................... 24 4.1.3 Supposed neutrality and distance .................................................................................................. 26 4.1.4 Abuse and violence make news .................................................................................................... 27 4.1.5 Representation of limited welfare claims ...................................................................................... 28 4.1.6 ‘Ethical’ animal farming ............................................................................................................... 29 4.2 Challenging animal oppression ......................................................................................... 31 4.2.1 Farmed animals’ suffering, sentience, and lives ........................................................................... 31 4.2.2 Challenges to the animal industry ................................................................................................. 32 4.2.3 Workers‘ trouble with killing ........................................................................................................ 33 4.3 Challenges from outside Animals farmed ......................................................................... 33 4.3.1 Regular articles .............................................................................................................................. 33 4.3.2 Opinion pieces ............................................................................................................................... 34 5 Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 34 5.1 Problems of the welfarist ideology .................................................................................... 36 5.2 Political economy and philanthropy ................................................................................. 38 6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 42 7 References ....................................................................................................................... 44 8 Appendix ......................................................................................................................... 48 3 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview The animal industry exploits and kills billions of nonhuman animals for food every year 1. Chickens, pigs, fishes, cows, sheep, goats, and members of many other species suffer in confinement and are killed while they are still young. This violence has long historical roots in human society. Despite these roots, the animal industry requires the continued acceptance of the majority of the human population to exist. However, more and more humans are challenging animal oppression and increasing the concern for farmed animals. This growing concern has recently resulted in a dedicated, philanthropy-funded series in The Guardian called Animals farmed. The series covers issues on intensive farming and its alternatives. Newspapers wield considerable influence on public opinion. Hence, the perspectives in news articles can impact readers’ acceptance of the animal industry. Therefore, better understanding how newspapers represent farmed animals supports the struggle against animal oppression. This study aims to inform journalists on how articles in Animals farmed challenge animal oppression or reinforce the violent status quo. The entire examined series contained 196 articles as of April 20th, 2020. This study analysed the whole corpus, plus 8 selected The Guardian articles from outside the series. On these texts, the study conducted a lexical and semantic analysis, as well as an analysis of suppressions and presuppositions. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach was chosen in this study because it can reveal underlying common-sense assumptions. Drawing together the dominant messages in the series explains whether the language used in the series reinforces or challenges animal oppression. Unlike most CDA, this study also incorporated a political economy analysis. This analysis revealed the economic pressures underlying the series. Several innovations mark the importance of this empirical study. Firstly, few studies have used a CDA approach on farmed animals’ representation in newspapers. The dedicated series provides a unique case compared to previous studies analysing articles across newspapers. Secondly, the study explored the potential of combining CDA with a political 1 The use of language in describing other animals’ situation is both important and challenging. Acknowledging the generalizations of vast numbers of different individuals into one term, I will use ‘farmed animals’ from hereon to include all nonhuman animals used for food. ‘Farmed’ instead of ‘farm’ animals is chosen to highlight the exploitation done to them, which does not define them, similar to using ‘enslaved people’ instead of ‘slaves’. The term ‘animal industry’ in this study covers all operations exploiting farmed animals. Additionally, I use ‚fishes‘ over the impersonal mass noun ‚fish‘ to highlight the individualities (Balcombe 2016) 4 economy analysis, two approaches that generally remain separately. Thirdly, the connection between philanthropy,
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