Re/Thinking Chickens: The Discourse around Chicken Farming in British Newspapers and Campaigners’ Magazines, 1982 - 2016

Chickens are one of the most hyper-exploited species on the planet, but their trivialisation in public discourse makes it difficult to respond to the scale and intensity of their suffering with appropriate seriousness. In this ground-breaking book, Elena Lazutkaite takes chicken’s suffering seriously. She foregrounds the harms of chicken farming for chickens themselves, for the wider environment and for public health, while documenting how it continues largely unopposed. Across a span of 34 years and hundreds of newspaper stories, features and opinion pieces, Lazutkaite’s impressively detailed research reveals a discursive inertia that has largely failed to document or critically interrogate the massive acceleration in scale and intensity of chicken’s exploitation.

Lazutkaite analyses how news stories typically adopt a detached, dispassionate tone when discussing chickens, while excluding the perspective of advocates for chickens. This lack of balance under the guise of objectivity inhibits public awareness of chicken’s subjective experiences of violence and suffering. Lazutkaite also highlights the limitations of activist critiques of chicken farming in campaigning literature: activist discourse over the same span of 34 years tends to focus on chickens as victims, instead of their thwarted capacities to live full and flourishing lives. “Re/thinking chickens” is, therefore, an invaluable resource for activists and scholars alike: it persuasively argues that the language we use to talk about chickens shapes our actions towards them, and for them."

I think the book will find an audience among academics working in the trans-disciplinary field of Human-Animal Studies, and especially Critical Animal Studies. It will also be of interest to academics interested in Critical Discourse Analysis methodology and discourse analysis more broadly.

Dr Matthew Cole

Department of Social Policy and Criminology

The Open University

“Re/Thinking Chickens: The Discourse around Chicken Farming in British Newspapers and Campaigners’ Magazines, 1982 - 2016” by E. Lazutkaite is a thorough critical analysis of the problems surrounding the representation of farmed chickens in print media. While the book will gather the most interest from specialists in the field, the clear language and structure make it accessible for a broader audience, such as animal welfare campaigners.

Early introduction of problematic language helps frame the rest of the manuscript and clearly sets out the author’s position and objectives. Previous publications are analysed critically, with further information added where possible.

The strongest point of the book is the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods to provide an in-depth analysis that accurately identifies the major issues in the representations of farmed chickens and answers the research questions. Additionally, positive discourse analysis is incorporated in the study, highlighting the positives across the included sources and further opportunities for challenging the status quo to improve chicken welfare in the long term. The unique design of the study makes it valuable for future efforts across the social sciences.

Dr Greta Lazutkaitė

University of Warwick