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Contesting Animal Rights on the Internet

Discourse Analysis of the Social Construction of Argument

University College Cork, Ireland

John C. McCarthy

University College Cork, Ireland

This article examines contributions to argument on Internet sites concerned with animal rights. As this is part of a project examining how "rights" and "cases" are constructed and contested through argument, the texts considered are selected from sites that take an explicit stance for or against animal rights. Our reading of these texts highlights the strategies used by pro- and anti-animal-rights contributors. The pro-animal-rights side used two main argumentative strategies. The first constructed animal use as a moral problem by ascribing rights to animals in discourses of suffering, oppression, and depravity. The second constructed animal rights as mutually reinforcing of human welfare by presenting animal use as needless for, and dangerous to, human health. The anti-animal-rights side reconstructed animal use as necessary for reasons including human health, thereby situating animal interests and human welfare as incompatible, and make animal rights rather than animal use the moral problem. Implications are discussed.

Key Words: animal rights • argument • argumentative strategy • dialogue • social construction • action-oriented • discourse

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