If I hadn’t done a degree in Religious Studies I may well have ended up doing a degree in linguistics. Ever since I started university I have continually uncovered the way that words shape the way that we see the world. When I began learning other languages I discovered just how different other cultures can see the exact same things in astonishingly different ways. While studying Gaelic I noticed that there is a difference in the way that we speak about the natural world, a level of animate liveliness lacking in English and many languages. In some indigenous languages in Canada you cannot call someone “a jerk”; there is no way to appoint that permanent characteristic to anyone. You can say that someone is acting “like a jerk today” or “was lazy yesterday” but nobody “is lazy”. In these cultures, ascribing a permanent characteristic to someone means that you trap them into that way of being and don’t allow them to grow, to change or to show you other sides of themselves. This process of learning languages and about languages showed me how harsh, dualistic and inanimate the English language can be at times. So how does language, particularly my mother tongue of English, relate to veganism? More ways than I had ever realized before going vegan!
I plan to make this a several part series on “linguistic veganology” but I will begin with the way that we talk about some animal-based foods. How do we separate ourselves from non-human animals? (Wait… we’re also animals? Mais oui.)
Imagine you ask your friend what they’re having for dinner and they respond with “well, I have a delicious decapitated corpse of a plucked female chicken wrapped in the thinly sliced butt of a pig. With a side of hand-picked potatoes slathered in the churned secretion of a lactating cow’s udder.” This sentence is factually correct if you’re going to cook a bacon-wrapped ‘whole’ chicken with potatoes and butter for supper, but it seems incredibly aggressive to state it as such!
Or how about “well, I went down the street to have my butcher murder this large male pig so it’s fresh and clean; so I’ll eat the butt of him tonight paired with the ovulation product of a female chicken and some whole wheat toast.” Again, bacon and eggs has never sounded so vile! But this is a factually correct statement, as eggs are the product of a female chicken’s menstrual cycle and all pigs must be killed against their will to be eaten.
These are just two examples of the hundreds of ways that we distill language around animal products to a comfortable level so we can consume them. A ‘whole chicken’ isn’t really a whole chicken! It has already had its head and feet removed. Not to mention the feathers that make the breed more obvious. We call chicken’s eggs simply “eggs” as if this removes a level of relation to an animal. We also hide individualization to remove the sentience of an animal, as Carol J. Adams has noted in her work (author of The Sexual Politics of Meat among other vegan feminist classics). Note that we never say “I am going to have A chicken tonight.” Rather, we’re merely eating chicken. Including the individual ‘a’ gives a sense that you may be eating someone rather than something.
The sex of animals is something we also don’t consider. We never question whether the animal that we’re eating was male or female. Male pig butt or female pig butt? We never wonder about their age. Do we ever consider if she has given birth? If he had a high amount of testosterone or estrogen? A trend in fast-food is flaunting that a chain’s meat is made without “added hormones or antibiotics.” Not mentioned is the fact that all animals have hormones, like human animals, and so even without added growth hormones we will be eating an animal that naturally has hormones.
When a human dies, we refer to their body as a corpse. When a non-human animal that is seen as fit for consumption dies, we refer to the body as a carcass. A carcass implies food and decomposition. A corpse implies a respected, sentient being, often one that will be buried. Every culture has food taboos. Many of these food taboos center around what animals/animal products are acceptable. Kosher and Halal meat excludes pigs; many Hindus will eat fish or chicken but never beef; Jains traditionally consumed milk but not eggs; The English would never eat a dog but China has taken little issue with eating this animal and even celebrates dog meat in an annual festival.
Whether food taboos come from economic/geographic needs which become mythologies of cultural or religious value, or they have other origins, it’s interesting to note the frequent distinction between pets, food, revered/sacred animals and humans. When you go vegan, the outrage of people over animal shelters “putting down” dogs versus the acceptance of the daily slaughter of millions of farm animals exposes an uncomfortable false dualism that many try to fill with responses like “this animal is dumb”, “this animal is ugly” and so forth. What differs the corpse of our beloved pet dog from the corpse of an equally, if not more intelligent pig? (note that if we’re eating animals based on their intelligence, there’s a sentient carrot stick-coloured animal running the USA that is very likely less intelligent than a pig, but I don’t imagine anybody is considering it ethical or desirable to eat him. Just stop with that argument, please.)
These were among the first layers of language I uncovered when I started easing into veganism. Thinking about the way that we dismember, disassociate, disconnect and deny the lived realities of non-human animals has had a profound impact on the way I look at animal-based dishes offered in advertisements or on my friends’ instagram pages. It has even led to some bizarre connections that give me awkward mental images. Suddenly I can’t help but see a human crouching under an udder trying to suckle the milk out like a baby cow. I look at Thanksgiving turkey and wonder if it was a male or female, what its personality would have been like, if it was in good health or sat in disease in a factory farm, or what kind of suffering he or she endured.
The more I can re-connect my language in a way that removes the veil on animal products, the easier it is to remain vegan. Yet, the easier it becomes to remain vegan, the harder it is to walk around in my society and feel like I’m one of the only ones awake in the Matrix. I’m tired of hearing that plants have feelings, but when I discover the sex, personality, and screams of a potato, I’ll be the first to let you all know.
Veganology 