Dear Friend!
Please see further down a message from George Jacobs. Would you like to collaborate?

Dear Evelin,
We were in touch about a year ago, when Arran Stibbe and I discussed with you our work on the language we use to talk about our fellow animals (see http://www.humiliationstudies.org/intervention/animals.php).

I'm pleased to inform you that we have co-edited a special issue of the journal Society & Animals, due to appear early in 2006. The special issue will be available online only in 2007. Firther down please find the issue's intro. I'm happy to forward soft copies of any of the articles to anyone you know who might be interested.

Arran and I plan to continue pursuing this topic, in case anyone you know is doing parallel work and/or might like to collaborate.

Cooperatively yours - george

George Jacobs, Ph.D.
President, Vegetarian Society (Singapore)
www.vegetarian-society.org
george @ vegetarian-society . org
190 Clemenceau Ave, #04-19/20
Singapore Shopping Centre
SINGAPORE 239924 (address for correspondence only)

Brief Introduction to the special issue

The twentieth century saw what could be described as a parting of the ways between humans and other species of animal in many parts of the world. Increasing urbanisation and the intensification of farming resulted in restricted opportunities to interact directly with other animals, particularly free-roaming animals in their natural habitats. At the same time, changes in technology led to greatly increased opportunities to come into contact with animals indirectly, through their representation in media such as film, television and the internet. This extra stage of mediation between actual animals in the world and a human population’s experience of them is extremely important, because representations are necessarily partial.

Among the forces which potentially influence representations are powerful commercial forces, pressuring for more intensive confinement of animals, increased human use of habitats, larger catches of wild animals, and numerous other ways of increasing the utility drawn from animals. At the same time, these forces are resisted in a variety of directions by those working for animal welfare, rights or liberation, as well as environmentalists and ecologists aware of the effects that the treatment of animals was having on the planet.

Over the course of the twenty first century, the relationship between humans and other animals looks set to become even more distant, and more mediated. As cloning, genetic engineering, the use of animals as medicine factories, and new confinement techniques go from being a novelty to being ubiquitous, representation will increasingly become the site where the future of many species of animals is determined.
It becomes increasingly important, therefore, to understand the processes of representation and how they are influenced by the forces present in society. There have, in recent years, been a number of studies of the linguistic representation of non-human animals, but this will be the first special issue dedicated entirely to analysis of linguistic representations of animals and contains six new articles.