Book description
Animals are disappearing, vanishing, and dying out--not just in the
physical sense of becoming extinct, but in the sense of being erased
from our consciousness. Increasingly, interactions with animals happen
at a remove: mediated by nature programs, books, and cartoons; framed by
the enclosures of zoos and aquariums; distanced by the museum cases that
display lifeless bodies. In this thought-provoking book, Arran Stibbe
takes us on a journey of discovery, revealing the many ways in which
language affects our relationships with animals and the natural world.
Animal-product industry manuals, school textbooks, ecological reports,
media coverage of environmental issues, and animal-rights polemics all
commonly portray animals as inanimate objects or passive victims. In his
search for an alternative to these negative forms of discourse, Stibbe
turns to the traditional culture of Japan. Within Zen philosophy, haiku
poetry, and even contemporary children's animated films, animals appear
as active agents, leading their own lives for their own purposes, and of
value in themselves. Arran Stibbe is a reader in ecological
linguistics at the University of Gloucestershire. He is the founder of
the Language and Ecology Research Forum (www. ecoling. net).
