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. 2023 Jan;62(1):486-502.
doi: 10.1111/bjso.12561. Epub 2022 Jul 30.

Speciesism in everyday language

Stefan Leach  1 , Andrew P Kitchin, Robbie M Sutton  1 , Kristof Dhont  1
Affiliations

Speciesism in everyday language

Stefan Leach et al. Br J Soc Psychol. 2023 Jan.

Abstract

Speciesism, like other forms of prejudice, is thought to be underpinned by biased patterns of language use. Thus far, however, psychological science has primarily focused on how speciesism is reflected in individuals' thoughts as opposed to wider collective systems of meaning such as language. We present a large-scale quantitative test of speciesism by applying machine-learning methods (word embeddings) to billions of English words derived from conversation, film, books, and the Internet. We found evidence of anthropocentric speciesism: words denoting concern (vs. indifference) and value (vs. valueless) were more closely associated with words denoting humans compared to many other animals. We also found evidence of companion animal speciesism: the same words were more closely associated with words denoting companion animals compared to most other animals. The work describes speciesism as a pervasive collective phenomenon that is evident in a naturally occurring expression of human psychology - everyday language.

Keywords: animals; human-animal relations; natural language processing; speciesism; word embeddings.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Anthropocentric speciesism in language. Note: WEAT is a standardized measure reflecting the average difference in the similarity between words representing humans and other groups; where y = 0 reflects no difference with humans. Concern reflects the difference in similarity between words denoting concern and indifference. Value reflects the difference in similarity between words denoting value and valueless. The figure depicts model‐level estimates (coloured diamonds), meta‐level estimates (black diamonds), and 95% CIs (whiskers)
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Companion animal speciesism in language. Note: WEAT is a standardized measure reflecting the average difference in the similarity between words representing companion animals and other groups; where y = 0 reflects no difference with companion animals. Concern reflects the difference in similarity between words denoting concern and indifference. Value reflects the difference in similarity between words denoting value and valueless. The figure depicts model‐level estimates (coloured diamonds), meta‐level estimates (black diamonds), and 95% CIs (whiskers)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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