ABSTRACT
In the early 21st century, industrial discourses are deeply imprinted by capitalism, and the notion that global warming is a pressing issue established around the world. Yet even as humanity faces one of its most important crises in history, the public debate on climate change scarcely mentions the underlying economic and industrial system that provoked it and continues to drive the situation towards the precipice: capitalism and its regard for the planet as a resource to exploit with the objective of maximizing profits as rapidly and as extensively as possible. However, the Marxian perspectives that have been frequently adopted to criticize capitalist discourses – such as those grounding theoretical frameworks in Critical Discourse Analysis – also focus on the distribution of resources and the relations established among them instead of deconstructing the category itself. This is so because, being a response to capitalistic practices and discourses, the Marxian logic is also structured through a similar categorization of non-human species and nature as the one that articulates capitalism. Adopting ecolinguistics as a theoretical framework, the author aims to problematize the Marxian concept of social class and its implications for environmental, ecological, and animal rights discourses, discussing the place assigned to non-human animals considering their agency as a working force and experience as living beings. The discussion aims to evidence the central role of the treatment of other species in the deconstruction of industrial discourses and the possibilities the expansion of Marxian categories may pose in relation to the study of social conflict through discourse.
