Words are Powerful, Even for Animals
By Jess Barfield
In today’s world, we are often reminded that words are “powerful” and may have lasting effects. In January, People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) tweeted that insults like “pig”, “snake”, or “chicken” hurt animals, and for this pronouncement, social media had a lot to say in response.
One commenter posited “I can’t tell if this is real or you guys are making fun of yourselves.” But according to PETA (just as with humans) “Words can create a more inclusive world, or perpetuate oppression.” To PETA, calling someone an animal as an insult reinforces the idea (to them a myth) that humans are superior to other animals and therefore justified in violating them. But of course, what constitutes “superior” is not so straight-forward as many members of the UTK community who are pet owners know.
The use of words as substitutes for other meanings, such as “chicken” for a coward, “rat” for a snitch,” “snake” for a jerk, “pig” for someone who is repulsive and “sloth” for a lazy person, are all examples of language that reinforces human false perceptions of animals. But in response to PETAs call for sensitivity in word usage towards animals, one Twitter commenter wrote, “Animals aren’t oppressed by those words because they don’t understand our language. And have no concept of words and their meaning.” And when one person wrote “come back to me about being less superior than animals when an anteater builds a house” PETA answered, “Building houses is a skill humans excel at, yet there are plenty of skills and talents other animals have that humans can only dream of – birds can soar through the sky at ease, ants can organize their labor towards a collective goal, and salmon can swim upstream to find their home!”
So, what does social media have to say about this issue? The Adams Brown Social Media Command Center’s software and tools can be used to identify recent sentiment on the topic. A look into Salesforce’s Social Studio shows a 147% increase in chatter surrounding PETA over the past week- which is likely attributed to their controversial tweet on January 26th. Of all the chatter over the past seven days, it appears that nearly 65% of the tweets containing the word “PETA” have a negative sentiment, indicating that people are unhappy with PETA’s announcement.
What do you think of PETA’s call to action? From Peta’s website, here are some substitute words to use which do not have negative connotations for animals.