Speciesism in the Croatian language

Abstract

https://doi.org/10.21860/j.14.1.6

In constructing an image of the world using linguistic constructs, people often (in)justifiably simplify and generalize schemes that do not correspond with facts (Bertoša 1999: 65). Human perception of animals and animalistic characteristics is therefore often highly polarized – animals are either helpful or useless, good or evil, and intelligent or stupid. The human abuse of language in speech expressions that refer to animals and animalistic references reflects an anthropocentric image of the world, i.e., an image characteristic of speciesism. The paper will semantically describe speciesism in the Croatian language, in which the same linguistic and sociolinguistic pattern has been confirmed: in a speciesist vocabulary, i.e., by using speech expressions that refer to animals and animalistic, humans allow the interests of their own species to prevail over the interests of members of other species. The paper lists possible non-speciesist definitions of the meaning of words for the biological functions of conception, pregnancy, birth, death, and dead bodies in expressions related to humans and animals.