1. Ecolinguistics: speciecist discourse and cognitive structures

The term "speciesism" first appeared in 1970 in a pamphlet written by Ryder [1998], a philosopher belonging to the Oxford Group, and from then on has been used to refer to discrimination based on species. But discrimination against other species can be traced back to classical antiquity. Aristotle, in Politics stated:

Plants exist for animals, and other animals, for the benefit of man; The domestic ones for their use and their food, and the savages - if not all, at least     most of them – to serve as food and other purposes, to offer both clothing and    other utensils. Therefore, if nature does nothing imperfectly or in vain, it is necessary that all such beings exist naturally for the benefit of man [1999, p. 13].

Judaism and Christianity maintained the same status for animals, granting them a place of simple service to man. Then the automatism of Descartes removed their soul and consciousness, transforming them into robots. This perspective, whose reminiscences are still felt, considers them totally devoid of understanding and incapable of experiencing pain, pleasure or other sensations or emotions.

On the other hand, in the late 1990s, Ecolinguistics made its appearance as a new paradigm of research, taking into account not only the social context in which a language is embedded but also the relationship societies establish with the natural environment. This approach can be characterized as a form of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) committed to the study of the verbal connection between humans and other animals. It explores the role of language in the interaction among the human species, other species and the environment in which they develop. Although these analysts start from the theoretical framework provided by CDA, their perspective is broad, including proposals from other disciplines that take, with a critical view, the relationship between language and biodiversity as object of study. As an analytic perspective, Ecolinguistics seek to deconstruct the speciesist representations in order to dismantle the automation their meanings provoke, to show that these meanings are not natural but the product of particular power relations.

In Western world, speciesist representations are a part of the dominant discourse [Raiter, 2003, P. 167], which imposes its discriminatory logic by turning them into objects, denying them identity, and not recognizing them as a living beings. Social representations in the common sense of a given society circulate meanings that are considered absolute and indisputable for the members of that given society [Raiter, 2003, P. 140]. In the minds of speakers these representations are completed in a consistent whole [Raiter, 2003, P. 141] and form cognitive structures, belief systems, which shape their worldview. In other words, mental representations provide the framework to constitute the stories that order and guide the way we live:

The stories we live by are different, however. We are exposed to them without consciously selecting them or necessarily being aware that they are just stories...Importantly the stories-we-live-by influence how we act in the world – if nature is seen as a resource then we may be more likely to exploit it, or if economic growth is seen as the primary goal of politics then people’s wellbeing and the ecosystems which support life may be overlooked. The role of the form of ecolinguistics ... is to analyze texts to expose the underlying stories, and then consider carefully how they encourage us to act. [Stibbe, 2015, P. 9-10].

Although Ecolinguistics is much more than animalistic studies, these have experienced a significant growth during the past decade. The so-called "animalistic turn" in academic research has managed to move between humanistic disciplines,  fine arts and social sciences, even reaching fields such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, political science and sociology and literature, history, critical and cultural studies, as well as on geography, feminism and The Queer theory. [Best, 2013, P. 3].

2. The declassed

The concept of "declassification" implies an individual not included in any class. When there is no will of the individual to self-exclude, that non-inclusion is constituted as a prejudice: the individual does not meet the characteristics that power requires for inclusion. According to Bourdieu there are different types of capital, social class is defined by the capital accumulated by individuals. Thus, capital is understood by Bourdieu as a force that determines what is possible and what is not. The distribution structure of the different types of capital, at a given point in time, corresponds to the immanent structure of the social world, that is, to the totality of forces inherent to it, and by which the social reality functions [2000: 132-133].

Nonhuman animals are inserted into capitalism as commodities, they have exchange value. They cannot accumulate capital: they are something to be accumulated. A given number of cattle means wealth. Dogs or cats of a certain pedigree go hand in hand with social status. And so forth. But a possibility of agency is contemplated for them: the can adopt the characteristics of live risk. The can move and act as something dangerous, as something that mines human security. They can attack, transmit diseases, eat our food or drain our resources. So, when they cannot be accumulated they need to be controlled or destroyed for human safety.

3. Theoretical framework

This research will take as a theoretical framework Social Semiotics proposed by Hodge and Kress [1988]. According to these authors, meaning resides in different systems, in several codes, so the analysis of the verbal dimension is not enough [1988, P. vii]. A theory about verbal language must be placed in the context of all socially constituted systems of meaning. Thus communication must be seen as a process rather than as a cluster of meanings. These meanings are produced and reproduced in the context of specific social conditions through different means and by different agents. They exist in relation to concrete subjects and objects and can only be explained in terms of the relations they contract with each other.

Society is typically constituted by structures and relations of power, exercised or resisted; it is characterized by conflict as well as cohesion, so that the structures of meaning at all levels, from dominant ideological forms to local acts of meaning will show traces of contradiction, ambiguity, polysemy in various proportions, by various means. So for us, texts and contexts, agents and objects of meaning, social structures and forces and their complex interrelationships together constitute the minimal and irreducible object of semiotic analysis. [Hodge & Kress, 1988, P. viii].

In this context, communicative practices are defined in terms of their linguistic resources, that is, sound, spatial and visual elements. In order to cover both verbal and visual material, the development of the analysis will adopt the tools proposed by Hodge and Kress [1993] for the assignment of thematic roles and description of processes in the verbal material together with the elements systematized by Kress and van Leeuwen [1996] for image analysis and Ekman [2003] and Kendon [2004] for gestural analysis.

4. Corpus

The analysis will be carried out on three graphic press notes, belonging to three different newspapers, from three different countries and written in three different languages:

- Callejeros con seguro médico (stray dogs with health insurance). This story appeared in the digital version of the Argentine newspaper Página 12, on 11/29/2016 and were signed by Nicolás Romero. It is written in Spanish.

- En France, une législation stricte gère la population des chiens errants (In France, strict legislation manages the population of stray dogs). Appeared in the digital version of L'Expres, France, on 03/01/2017. It is an editorial note, no sign, and it is written in French.

- India has 30 million stray dogs. In one state, vigilantes are being pushed to kill them. It was published by The Washington Post website, USA, 01/21/2016. Signed by Rama Lakshmi, text in English.

The selection of the corpus was made taking into account the need to inquire about the way in which different western societies construct speciesist representations using the resources provided by three Indo-European languages. Having in mind the common origin and the relationship among this three languages (that, on the other hand, are the most widespread European languages) seemed useful to understand the use of resources in this languages to build up discriminatory representations.

5. Hypothesis

As mentioned before, this paper aims to analyze the construction of the speciesist positioning in a corpus of journalistic notes on homeless animals. We will start from the hypothesis that the speciesist representations prioritize the position of threat or sanitary risk in the discursive construction of nonhuman animals, granting them the place of affected within the eventual structure. They will be constructed as passive objects, with no possibility of choice or action, unless they are considered a health risk.

6. Analysis

6.1. Stray dogs with health insurance

The story appeared on November 29, 2016 in the website of the Argentine newspaper Página 12, in the section Sociedad (society), column Derechos de los animales (Animal Rights). It is signed by Nicolás Romero. Next, we will describe the conformation of its actional and relational systems.

Table 1. Actional and relational systems

Actors in actional processes

Entities in relational processes

Dogs as actor

Two classes of dogs are represented as actors in the story: 1. Dogs that go to resorts and restaurants, 2. The others, the declassed ones that represent a sanitary risk. Under the category "affected" are represented the stray dogs that are took by the program of the municipality, which puts them in treatment and release them with a mark in the ear. These also appear involved in relational processes. They are only agents in two cases: 1. Attacking the intendant Patricio Mussi, and 2. Being used to fight dogs from other municipalities, that is, as a sanitary barrier.

In addition, when participating in relational processes, their identity is subsumed by some element that classifies them, either associating them with a brand (the mark, the caravan) or integrating them into a collective group (the population).

According to the text, unowned dogs are presumed of carrying diseases and pose a health risk. Under this logic, actions are not carried out for the welfare of street dogs but because they represent a risk to the human population: they transmit diseases. But this central idea is camouflaged as a charitable action towards stray dogs.

The following quotation from Fernando Ghersinich, taken from the text, shows that the intention behind the program is not to benefit animals but a sanitary measure in relation to the human population:

lo ideal es que no haya perros en la calle, pero la realidad es que hay muchos y son un problema sanitario, por eso desarrollamos el programa que consiste en la colocación de una caravana (un botón plástico) en la oreja del perro, que es como el que se utiliza en grande animales, pero más chicos. Es un dispositivo liviano, para que no le moleste, redondo y de color amarillo, que tiene un número de identificación que está asociado a una historia clínica… se decidió el uso de una caravana y no de un chip –aclaró el veterinario– porque la idea es que cualquier vecino pueda reconocer la caravana, que significa que es un animal monitoreado por el municipio, ver el número que identifica al animal, y llamarnos. En cambio, el chip se implanta bajo la piel, y se necesita un lector para accederlo… la población es demasiado grande y no hay espacio físico para albergar a todos, por eso la castración”, remarcó y explicó que “al estar vacunados y desparasitados, como son territoriales y compiten con otros perros que vienen de afuera, actúan como barrera biológica impidiendo la difusión de enfermedades.

The best scenario would be no dogs on the street, but the reality is that there are many and they are a health problem, that's why we developed this program that involves the placement of a caravan [a plastic button] in the dog's ear, which is Like the one used in large animals, but smaller. It is a light device, not to disturb, round and yellow, which has an identification number that is associated with a medical record ... it was decided to use a caravan and not a chip, said the veterinarian, because the idea is that any neighbor can recognize the caravan, which shows that it is an animal monitored by the municipality, you can see the number that identifies the animal, and call us. Instead, the chip is implanted under the skin, and a reader is needed to access it ... the population is too large and there is no physical space to accommodate everyone, that is why castration is performed, he remarked and explained that being vaccinated and dewormed, as they are territorial and compete with other dogs that come from outside, they act as a biological barrier preventing the spread of diseases[1].

In addition, some lexical pieces deserve particular attention: declassed
and Community dogs.

The concept of declassification gives the dogs the [+ human] feature, but in a negative way. It involves a process in which one participant loses its status, what is to say, an agent "declasses", removes the class or status to another. In this way, stray dogs are homologated to the situation of the lower class of human animals. But, on the other hand, as we have seen, these dogs are not themselves agents in processes involving them, unless those processes have negative consequences on human animals. This would justify its treatment in terms of human benefit and its use as a sanitary barrier. Also, the dogs that entered in the municipal program are called community dogs. But this status is related to the neighborhood identification, to the fact that each neighbor can identify the “caravaneados” and remain calm because they do not represent a risk for health. So, in the end, it is more a question of political claimings than of public service.

Image Analysis