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Article published In: Moving towards Peace, Compassion and Empathy through Semiotic Enquiry: Special issue of the Journal Language, Context and Text 6:1 (2024)
Edited by Elizabeth A. Thomson, Awni Etaywe, Ingrid Wijeyewardene and Penny Wheeler
[Language, Context and Text 6:1] 2024
► pp. 122–145

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Feeling, thinking, acting

An intersemiotic study of empathy and compassion in vegan discourse

ORCiD logo with link | Østfold University College, Norway | University of Wollongong, Australia
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

This article was made Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the author.

Published online: 20 August 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00067.fry
Abstract
This article considers the multi- and intersemiotic expression of empathy and compassion in a campaign organised by the Vegan Society. It draws upon insights from ecofeminism and the ethics of care as well as systemic functional semiotics as a way of exploring how instances of attitude (affect, judgment and appreciation) in the campaign’s various texts might be negotiated and shared, creating potentials for empathetic and compassionate responses. The study finds that parts of the campaign represent empathy and compassion as exemplars for readers to follow, while other parts of the campaign, especially social media, provide readers with an opportunity to enact empathy and compassion. The study also identifies gendered and generational dimensions, and suggests that syndromes or clusters of positive and negative attitude can form the basis for empathetic and compassionate responses.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Veganism, the Vegan Society and the “Be AnimalKind” campaign
  • 3.Empathy, compassion and the ethics of care
  • 4.Appraisal: Emotion, ethics, aesthetics
  • 5.Attitude and engagement in the “Be AnimalKind” campaign
    • 5.1Written introductory text
    • 5.2Introductory video
    • 5.3Short written texts and videos
    • 5.4Social media
  • 6.Representing, enacting and encouraging empathy and compassion
  • 7.Gendered and generational dimensions of empathy and compassion
  • 8.Empathy and compassion: Some concluding thoughts
  • Notes
  • References
References (45)
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