ABSTRACT
Euphemism, i.e., the whitewashing of facts, is a strategy frequently used to hide human use of animals, particularly the killing of animals for obtaining food, clothing and other ‘animal products’, as well as for using animals in sports, hunting, work and shows. This chapter discusses three strategies of euphemization: utilization, reification and tabooing. Utilization concerns the naming of animals according to the use we make of them (racehorse, milk cow, porker, etc.). Reification treats the use of animals as some kind of industrial process (e.g. meat production). In tabooing, words signifying death are avoided or blanked out (for example, animals are not ‘killed’, but bagged or hunted down). The chapter also contains recommendations for establishing a biocentric use of language in which euphemizing is no longer necessary.
