A textual analysis of ‘Study says aggressive vegans just make people want to eat meat’ PDF

Preview

Summary

essay...

Description

Q1082

Essay 1

164973

A textual analysis of ‘Study says aggressive vegans just make people want to eat meat’ This is a textual analysis of the article “Aggressive vegans just make people want to eat meat” by Daisy Meagre on munchies.vice.com, which discusses a survey conducted on the attitudes of meat-eating Brits towards vegans. I will be discussing both the lexis and discourse strategies present which reveal the writer’s stance, as well as the impact the strategies have on the reader.

The first notable thing is that the word ‘aggressive’ is only used twice. However, throughout the article Meagre discusses activities of vegans such as speeches during dinner and spamming social media, and depicts them to be pushy and obnoxious, thus indirectly giving the reader the impression that these activities are aggressive.

Meagre also uses several techniques to convey her stance, thus influencing how the readers perceive vegans as social actors. The social actors are represented through inclusion, and more specifically collectivisation (Van Leeuwen, 2008), which in turn creates an overgeneralisation of all vegans being aggressive. By representing the social actors in such a way, Meagre uses the macro strategy of negative other-presentation (Van Dijk, 1995).

Meagre’s tone is very negative throughout and she utilises discourse devices such as humour, irony, and hyperboles to show her stance. In fact, the whole first paragraph of the article is a hyperbole, ‘a semantic rhetorical device for the enhancement of meaning’ (Van Dijk, 2006, p. 737). Meagre describes how vegans push their agenda through sharing ‘how great their life choices are’, and states that ‘when they decided to go vegan, you sure knew about it’. Even though this paragraph has a humoristic tone, its purpose is to make the activities vegans engage in seem ridiculous. This ridicule is also present when Meagre discusses the source of the research, Vouches Codes Pro, which she describes as ‘the ever-reputable source on vegetarian behaviour that gave us such classics as “A third of vegetarians eat meat when they’re drunk”’. This insinuates that she finds the mentioned article funny, which shows that she uses the word ‘reputable’ ironically.

When analysing the way social actions are represented in the article using Van Leeuwen’s model of actions and reactions (2008), the actions are vegans sharing information about veganism, and the reaction being them doing it ‘aggressively’. These actions are non1

Q1082

Essay 1

164973

transitive up until Meagre reaches out to the spokesperson of The Vegan Society who explains that the aggression is in fact misunderstood passion for sharing information on the subject. This gives the actions a goal, making them transitive. This change to transitive processes disempowers Meagre, but she recovers her power by ending the article with another humoristic remark, which again aims to ridicule the activities of vegans, and brings the article back to her own stance.

In conclusion, Meagre uses discourse strategies such as humour, irony and hyperboles to reveal her stance, to make overgeneralisations, and to ridicule vegans. This brings the reader to the conclusion that all vegans are aggressive, even though the spokesperson of The Vegan Society says otherwise.

References Meagre, D. 2017. Study says aggressive vegans just make people want to eat meat, Vice Media LLC 2018, accessed 5 April 2018,

Van Dijk, T. A. 1995. Discourse analysis as ideology analysis. In: C. Schäffner & A. Wenden (Eds.), Language and Peace. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing, pp. 17-33.

Van Dijk, T. A. 2006. Politics, Ideology, and Discourse. Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, 2nd ed. p. 737.

Van Leeuwen, T. 2008. Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2

Q1082

Essay 1

164973

Appendix

Everyone has that one friend who just has to let you know how great their life choices are. You know exactly how many times they've been to the gym this week (every morning at 6 AM, including the weekend) and that their Nutribullet is used to make spinach and wheatgrass smoothies, not collect dust in the cupboard. And when they decided to go vegan, you sure knew about it. First, there was the holier-than-thou speech at the dinner table about climate change and then the spamming of the WhatsApp group with pictures of adorable little piglets. But so far, no one is replying to their "101 reasons to become vegan" links with a fist bump emoji. New research suggests that your pushy plant-based friend may be going about converting carnivores in completely the wrong way. According to a survey on the attitudes of 2,363 meat-eating Brits, the most popular reason for not becoming vegetarian or vegan is liking the taste of meat too much. Hardly surprising, bacon butties are pretty damn irresistible. But for a quarter of respondents, the reason for their continued meat-consumption is unrelated to food. They report not going veggie because "the attitude of certain vegetarians/vegans has put me off." The research, which was carried out by Voucher Codes Pro (the ever-reputable source on vegetarian behaviour that gave us such classics as "A Third of Vegetarians Eat Meat When They're Drunk"), probed the kind of ~bad vibes~ some veggies give off. Thirty-seven percent of the meat-eaters surveyed claim that 3

Q1082

Essay 1

164973

vegans and vegetarians are "quite aggressive" towards those eating meat and 25 percent say that they have been lectured about their carnivorous diets. Survey participants also claim that some of those following a plant-based diet consider "their way of eating to be the only way." MUNCHIES reached out to The Vegan Society and asked what they made of these accusations. Spokesperson Dominika Piasecka told us: "Many are passionate about veganism, eager to share information about its benefits to everyone, and open their eyes to animal suffering. This could mean that sometimes the anger and upset we feel inside of us is perceived as aggression towards those who don't follow the vegan lifestyle but this can't be further from the truth." Piasecka continued: "Most of us have not been vegan from birth and we know the reasons why people consume and use animals—we simply want to make them aware of the result of these actions. The majority of vegans are compassionate individuals who want to inspire others to live their lives more ethically, and it is unfair to dismiss this passion by calling vegans preachy or judgemental." Just don't talk to us about the green smoothies.

4...