In this paper we critically examine the language used to describe vegans and the practice of veganism in UK national daily and Sunday newspapers, for the calendar year of 2007, with a view to understanding one instance of speciesist discourse. In the next section, we describe the method used to analyse newspaper discourses. We then discuss our results in terms of the frequency of particular discourses, before turning to an interpretation of the meaning of each in turn. We conclude with some thoughts on possible strategies for combating derogatory media discourses of veganism, centring on the assertion of veganism as anti‐speciesist practice.

With reference to vegans and veganism, it is not only media representations which send out a message to audiences about how such issues should be viewed, but also the way that the dominant practices around meat‐eating are used to set the discursive parameters. This is not to argue that vegan discourses are completely absent from the media. For example, empirical evidence suggests that a transition to veganism often follows exposure to messages which are critical of speciesism and exploitative human‐nonhuman relations. This includes non‐mainstream media, such as vegan activist leaflets, books, films and websites ( Amato and Partridge 1989 ; McDonald et al. 1999 ; Larsson et al. 2003 ). Therefore, mainstream media messages about veganism are contested. However, contestational messages are not as widely distributed and require more effort on the part of social actors to seek them out.

In this paper, we approach the news media adopting a Foucauldian conceptualization of discourses, recognizing them as ‘structured ways of knowing’ which become ‘institutionalized as practices’ ( Ransom 1993 : 123). As Teun van Dijk suggests, there is ‘probably no other discursive practice, besides everyday conversation, that is engaged in so frequently and by so many people as news in the press and on the television’ (1991: 110). While it cannot be asserted that audiences are passive consumers of media, news stories are interpreted and consequently reinforced within frameworks which derive at least in part from the assumption that there is a consensual nature of society ( Hall et al. 1978 ). Given that often, news stories lie outside the audience's direct experience, the media's job is to render these stories comprehensible, placing them within a realm of understanding which makes them appear natural ( Hall et al. 1978 ; Gitlin 1980 ; see also Herman and Chomsky 1994 ). Although the media does allow for disagreement with dominant discourses, these take place within often already established frameworks of understanding. Counter‐discourses are therefore in a more difficult position, competing against pre‐existing terms of reference ( Hall et al. 1978 ). Consequently, as Foucault notes, there are parameters placed on what becomes possible to discuss and which help to explain ‘why a certain thing is seen (or omitted) [and] why it is envisaged under such an aspect’ ( Foucault 1989 : 61). It is in any case more difficult for those representing minority opinions to access the media than for mainstream groups or opinions ( Danelian 1992 ). When access is granted, the tendency is to present dominant perspectives as coming from a professional – someone of ‘high status’, whereas alternative perspectives are less likely to be attributed to an expert ( Kruse 1998 ).

Empirical sociological studies of vegans are rare ( McDonald 2000 ; Cole 2008 ). When vegans are present as research participants, they are usually treated as a subset of vegetarians and their veganism tends to be viewed as a form of dietary asceticism involving exceptional efforts of self‐transformation (see for example Beardsworth and Keil 2004 ). However, research also reveals the prominence of animal rights 2 as a motivation for many vegetarians ( Amato and Partridge 1989 ; Beardsworth and Keil 1992, 1993, 1997 ). Given the subsumption of vegans among a larger group of vegetarians in much of the research literature, the importance of animal rights as a particular motivation for vegans is underexplored. When vegans are researched specifically, animal rights clearly emerges as the primary motivation ( McDonald et al. 1999 ; McDonald 2000 ; Larsson et al. 2003 ). It is therefore plausible to assert that on the basis of existing evidence, veganism is understood by most vegans (though not necessarily in these terms) as an aspect of anti‐speciesist practice. However, the focus on diet, and specifically on dietary ‘restriction’, in much of the extant literature, tends to perpetuate a veganism‐as‐deviance model that fosters academic misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the meaning of veganism for vegans ( Cole 2008 ). In terms of broader societal dispositions against veganism, the mass media are arguably of far greater significance than academia in that they represent a key site of contestation for the meaning of veganism. However, to our knowledge, no empirical sociological study of the representation of vegans or veganism in the UK media has previously been undertaken.

As David Nibert argues a sociological account of speciesism requires an analysis of its manifestation in social institutions and relationships, ‘the social construction of speciesist reality’ (2002: 195). This moves beyond the philosophical roots of the term in the works of Ryder, Peter Singer (1995 ), and more recently, Joan Dunayer (2004 ). These authors, while making vital contributions to understanding the embeddedness of speciesism in language, thought and action, effectively limit speciesism to an individual attitude or practice. Just as anti‐feminist discourse perpetuates and legitimates patriarchal social relations (see Walby 1990 ), so, we argue, does anti‐vegan discourse perpetuate and legitimate speciesist social relations.

overlook[s] or underestimate[s] the similarities between the discriminator and those discriminated against and [. . .] show[s] a selfish disregard for the interests of others, and for their sufferings. ( Ryder 1983 : 5)

The institutionalization of human oppression of nonhuman animals is evidence of the pervasiveness of speciesism. Speciesism was first conceptualized by Richard Ryder as a form of prejudice against nonhuman animals, analogous to sexism and racism, that:

. . . a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude – as far as is possible and practical – all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose [. . .] In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.

Human violence towards and exploitation of nonhuman animals is endemic in ‘developed’ industrial societies, including the UK. For example, over 850 million nonhuman land‐dwelling animals are annually slaughtered for human food in the UK ( DEFRA 2010a, 2010b ). The number of aquatic animals slaughtered is not recorded, their individual deaths being subsumed by aggregate weight statistics. Veganism represents an opposition to violent and exploitative human‐nonhuman animal relations. Veganism is defined by The Vegan Society (2008 ) as:

The assembled sources were read and broadly categorized as ‘positive’, ‘negative’ or ‘neutral’ according to our interpretation of the overall tone of each source. Letters from readers were included, as editorial decisions to publish them may reasonably be interpreted as constituting part of newspapers' discourse on vegans and veganism. During this process, recurring discursive themes emerged that were used to generate subcategories of ‘negative’ discourses. After initial coding, sources were re‐read and ‘negative’ subcategories adjusted to more accurately reflect the discourses contained within them. Finally, sources were read for a third time, with particular attention paid to those that contained more than one ‘negative’ discourse, or combinations of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ discourses. Final allocations to categories were carried out on the basis of our interpretation as to the dominant discourse in each case.

LexisNexis, an online archive of content from printed sources, was used to search all UK national newspapers for the keywords ‘vegan’, ‘vegans’ and ‘veganism’ for the calendar year 2007, chosen as the most recent complete calendar year available when research began. This method had several advantages. It facilitated quick data gathering relative to manual archive searches. It allowed us to ascertain with some confidence the range of discourses in which keywords were embedded, in that, barring technical glitches, no use of the keywords in any UK national newspaper was missed. This was particularly useful in that it revealed discussions of vegans and veganism in unanticipated contexts, such as in ‘celebrity vegan’ stories. A drawback of LexisNexis is that it does not illuminate instances where veganism is discussed implicitly or tangentially, for example in the case of articles critical of the role of ‘livestock’ farming in climate change. LexisNexis is also less useful for detecting neologisms such as ‘veg’, used as a generic term to describe vegans and vegetarians simultaneously. Searching for the keyword ‘veg’ would have proved unwieldy given its ubiquitous use as shorthand for ‘vegetables’. A further limitation is that LexisNexis does not provide accompanying images with articles. Analysis of visual representations of vegans and veganism would merit a separate study.

Results

Our search yielded 397 articles in which one or more of the keywords were used at least once. The articles were collated and read, and organized under three broad headings: ‘positive’, ‘neutral’ and ‘negative’ (see Table I). Of the 397 articles 22, or 5.5 per cent, were categorized as ‘positive’; 80, or 20.2 per cent, were categorized as ‘neutral’; 295, or 74.3 per cent, were categorized as ‘negative’.

Table I. Frequency of discourses of veganism by newspaper* Newspaper Positive Neutral Negative TOTAL N % N % N % N Daily Express 0 0 1 100 0 0 1 Daily Mail 3 6.5 2 4.3 41 89.1 46 Daily Star 0 0 0 0 13 100 13 Daily Telegraph, The 1 4.8 1 4.8 19 90.5 21 Financial Times 1 7.7 7 53.8 5 38.5 13 Guardian, The 10 10.5 36 37.9 49 51.6 95 Independent, The 1 6.7 2 13.3 12 80 15 Mail on Sunday 0 0 1 12.5 7 87.5 8 Mirror, The 2 12.5 1 6.3 13 81.3 16 News of the World, The 0 0 1 20 4 80 5 Observer, The 1 2.7 2 5.4 34 91.9 37 People, The 0 0 4 66.7 2 33.3 6 Sun, The 0 0 2 9.5 19 90.4 21 Sunday Express, The 1 9.1 2 18.2 8 72.7 11 Sunday Mirror, The 0 0 1 14.3 6 85.7 7 Sunday Star, The 0 0 0 0 2 100 2 Sunday Telegraph, The 0 0 1 12.5 7 87.5 8 Sunday Times, The 1 3.1 7 21.9 24 75 32 Times, The 1 2.5 9 22.5 30 75 40 TOTAL 22 5.5 80 20.2 295 74.3 397

‘Positive’ articles were those deemed to be favourable towards vegans or veganism, for example giving glowing reviews of vegan food or providing an explanation of one or more argument for veganism. ‘Neutral’ articles mentioned vegans or veganism in passing without evaluative comment. Nearly all neutral articles were travel or food service reviews. ‘Negative’ articles were those which deployed one or more derogatory discourses, usually featuring one, or a combination, from a routinized set of anti‐vegan stereotypes. In some cases, more than one derogatory discourse was present in the same article. These discourses, in order of frequency of occurrence, were:

• Ridiculing veganism

• Characterizing veganism as asceticism

• Describing veganism as difficult or impossible to sustain

• Describing veganism as a fad

• Characterizing vegans as oversensitive

• Characterizing vegans as hostile

Table II shows the occurrence of each ‘negative’ discourse in each newspaper.

Table II. Frequency of negative discourses of veganism by newspaper Newspaper Ridicule Ascetic Difficult Fad Oversensitive Hostile TOTAL Daily Express 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Daily Mail 14 10 10 3 4 0 41 Daily Star 5 2 1 2 2 1 13 Daily Telegraph, The 3 4 5 5 1 1 19 Financial Times 2 1 1 0 0 1 5 Guardian, The 17 14 7 7 2 2 49 Independent, The 4 3 1 1 3 0 12 Mail on Sunday 1 4 1 0 1 0 7 Mirror, The 5 2 3 0 0 3 13 News of the World, The 2 1 1 0 0 0 4 Observer, The 10 6 9 3 5 1 34 People, The 2 0 0 0 0 0 2 Sun, The 5 4 5 0 3 2 19 Sunday Express, The 1 1 2 2 2 0 8 Sunday Mirror, The 0 3 0 3 0 0 6 Sunday Star, The 0 1 1 0 0 0 2 Sunday Telegraph, The 3 4 0 0 0 0 7 Sunday Times, The 9 9 3 1 1 1 24 Times, The 5 16 3 2 0 4 30 TOTAL 88 85 53 29 24 16 295

Some articles were ambiguous in that they synthesized ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ elements. However, with one exception, we judged that all such instances had the rhetorical effect of the ‘negative’ elements undermining any ‘positive’ content. Such examples were therefore categorized as ‘negative’. In practice, ‘negative’ discourses shade into, recall and reinforce each other, and their separation here is for analytical purposes only. Some of these interconnections will become apparent in the following sections, in which each of these discourses is considered in turn, before some reflection on the ‘positive’ and ‘neutral’ categories.

Ridiculing veganism The ridicule of veganism usually proceeds through ‘guilt‐by‐association’, often drawing on a presumed status of veganism as self‐evidently ridiculous in the newspaper readers' imagination: VEGAN back‐packer Tammy Andrews, [. . .] is taking her dead gran's crocodile bag to Australia . . . so she can bury it where it came from. (The People 2007b: 22) In this case, the acceptance of the rightful objectification of crocodiles as ‘providers’ of skin for handbags, is implicitly deployed in order to make the respectful act of posthumously restoring subjectivity to that crocodile(s) appear ridiculous. Elsewhere, veganism is juxtaposed with other cultural phenomena that are presented as self‐evidently ridiculous. One example comes from a Guardian story about the internet: Among the bizarre personal lists of UFO sightings (pictured) and vegan‐friendly cafés . . . (The Guardian: The Guide 2007: 31) Such examples attempt to define veganism as an inoffensive eccentricity. Others juxtapose veganism with the language of human oppression, as in this homophobic example from a reader's letter on the subject of ‘counciltax [sic] snoopers’: [t]hey will leave my home thinking I am a Devil‐worshipping vegan naturist, hopelessly gay, with a much‐kissed photo of John Prescott by my bed. (Mail on Sunday 2007: 80) Sometimes ridicule combines quasi‐scientific claims with anti‐vegan stereotyping. In response to a reader's letter about a flatulent work colleague, Joe Joseph of The Times wrote: . . . your colleague may recently have adopted a vegan diet for health or ecology reasons. Switching to such a diet can apparently result in the creation of half a litre of gas a day; which is paradoxical given that environmentally concerned people often switch to a vegan diet because they deem cows an eco‐menace [. . .] because they produce clouds of methane. (The Times: Times2 2007b: 3) This subversion of environmental arguments for veganism appears out of context with the reader's question, especially because the vegan diet of the offending colleague is a fiction of the journalist. It is also telling that only ‘heath or ecology reasons’ are mentioned – the absence of animal rights philosophy as a basis for veganism is a consistent theme throughout newspaper discourses of all kinds. Commitment to animals' rights, unlike the ‘strangeness’, environmental or health claims of vegans, is rarely a target for ridicule in the context of veganism. This represents a discursive divorce of veganism from animal rights debates, thereby defusing veganism of its most radical content. Given the prominence of animals' rights as a motivation for moving towards veganism (see the introduction to this paper) this represents a major distortion of the lived experience of veganism. This finding on the absence of the anti‐speciesist content of veganism from newspaper discourse is supported by the prominence of the next derogatory discourse – veganism as asceticism.

Describing veganism as difficult or impossible to sustain The ‘difficulty’ of veganism in newspaper articles typically boils down to the ridiculing of vegans' food as bland, unsatisfying, or impossible to obtain. This sometimes manifests as a pitying tone for the alleged paucity of vegans' diets and their exclusion from the supposed pleasure of eating nonhuman animals: The Labour MSP [. . .] admits to supporting Kilmarnock FC, but she can't have a pie at Rugby Park because she is a vegan. (Daily Mail 2007f: 13) A segue with asceticism is achieved through othering vegans' food as morally worthy yet unappetising: ‘as . . . wholesome as one of those pots of vegan yoghurt’ (Sunday Times 2007f: 4). Meanwhile, the taken‐for‐granted blandness of vegan food is asserted even in the face of evidence to the contrary: ‘suitable for vegans – though you'd never guess it from the taste’ (The Guardian: G2 2007: 23). ‘You’ are not a vegan, otherwise the deliciousness of the ‘vegan’ Easter egg being reviewed would be unremarkable. In contrast, the deliciousness of the bodily secretions of nonhuman animals is presented as unimpeachably beguiling: ‘she loves cheese too much to become a Vegan’ (Daily Mail: Weekend 2007: 49). While the asserted difficulty of veganism is typically limited to these subtle phraseologies, ridicule, asceticism and the difficulty of veganism combine with overt speciesism in this spectacular example of ‘you are what you eat’ derogatory discourse: If the choice is between swopping [sic] a balanced diet of food stuffs I can get at my local supermarket, for a faddish, fanatical diet cult [veganism, as promoted in the book Skinny Bitch . . .] I'd rather be a fat pig. (Daily Mail 2007c: 57) This tacit, but ambiguous view of the easy life as the good life (supermarket omnivorous convenience versus cultish veganism) re‐emerges in celebratory stories of the failures of vegans, typically centring on the irresistibility of nonhuman animal's flesh . . . Liv Tyler went vegan for love when she met Joaquin Phoenix, but returned to beef when the relationship went sour. (The Observer Food Monthly 2007b: 27) . . . or nonhuman animal's milk: [. . .] he is a vegan, unlike her – she still cannot resist occasional dairy products. (The Sunday Times 2007c: 24) Such examples reassure omnivorous readers that veganism is doomed to failure, and that they are not to feel guilty for not attempting it. It is a short step from celebrity vegan failure to a more thoroughgoing derogation of veganism as nothing more than a dietary fad.

Characterizing vegans as oversensitive The image of the oversensitive vegan plays to stereotypes of the sentimental ‘animal lover’ unable to cope with the harsh realities of nature red‐in‐tooth‐and‐claw. The typical form for this discourse is weak jokes at the expense of vegans. These jokes usually explicitly or implicitly associate meat‐eating with toughness and realism in comparison: [. . .] looks about as comfortable as a vegan in an abattoir. (The Guardian: Sport 2007: 20) like [. . .] inviting a vegan to a fondue night. (Daily Mail 2007e: 56) they will spit him out like veal at a vegan dinner party. (The Sunday Times: Culture 2007: 14) When the target is female, anti‐vegan and sexist discourse may be combined. But even when discussing veganism in the abstract, the oversensitive discourse is also a form of tacit feminization as it draws on gendered stereotypes of women as ‘over‐emotional’ or irrational. The usually unstated ‘oversensitivity’ argument goes as follows: [Vegans and/or women] are excessively sentimental. They are incapable of coping emotionally with the harsh realities of animal predation. Objecting to violence against other animals, gives evidence of their irrationality. They are therefore unsuited to rational debate on human relationships with other animals. They are therefore to be ridiculed and excluded from such debates. The effect of this rhetoric is that, by definition, only humans who consume nonhuman animals demonstrate themselves as not ‘too sensitive’. Thereby anti‐speciesism, as practiced by vegans, is excluded from discourse about human‐nonhuman animal relations. Occasionally ‘oversensitivity’ is used to legitimate direct attacks on vegans. The following letter to The Sunday Times editor entangles vegaphobia and Islamaphobia in its response to a report of a Muslim supermarket worker being exempted from handling alcohol: If they are to allow Muslim staff to opt out of serving alcohol, then can the Jews refuse to serve bacon and the Hindus beef products or indeed vegans any kind of meat product? It's time to draw the line I fear. (The Sunday Times 2007e: 18) This kind of indignation at real or imagined vegan claims to being treated with respect for their beliefs is relatively unusual, as it implies the exercise of a threatening agency to the speciesist order that is absent from the passivity imputed to the ascetic, faddist, or sentimentalist. On occasions, derogatory discourses take the imputation of vegan agency further, when they vilify the ‘hostile vegan’.

Characterizing vegans as hostile The rarest derogatory discourse was that of the hostile vegan. Examples ranged from the milder ‘outspoken vegan’ (The Sun 2007a) through ‘militant vegan’ (The Times: Times2 2007a: 6) to the outrageous ‘vegan terrorists’ (The Times 2007b: 12). But these examples referred to a fictional character in a television programme, a lead actor from the film Babe, and a character from a novel respectively. More unusual in its direct characterization of vegan hostility, though still tongue in cheek, was this allusion to the connection between veganism and animal rights activism: ‘It's always: “I'm a vegan. Stop murdering animals, you bastards.” ’ (The Sunday Times 2007b: 54). The major example of vegan hostility in 2007 was rather different in character, coming in the form of strident reports on the trial of ‘vegan parents’ for the murder of their baby in the USA: ‘Vegan Killers’ (The Sun 2007d); ‘Vegan diet kills baby’ (The Mirror 2007c: 23); ‘Strict vegans guilty of murder’ (The Times 2007c: 43). The veganism of the child's parents was stressed, despite the prosecutor's statement that ‘[t]he child died because he was not fed. The vegan diet is fine.’ (The Guardian 2007b: 17). These reports indicate clear anti‐vegan bias, in that, as the prosecutor stated, the veganism of the parents was irrelevant to the death of the child from starvation. When non‐vegans starve their babies to death, they are never reported as ‘Omnivorous killers’, and nor are we informed that a ‘Meat and dairy based diet kills baby’. In this instance, a hostile, literally murderous, discourse is informed by the more usual ascetic discourse of veganism. The real hostility of vegans is implied here as visited upon their own, as an extreme, tragic, instance of the denial of the flesh. The rarity of the hostile vegan discourse, in the context of the much more common strategies of ridiculing vegans and their food, accusations of asceticism or sentimentality, makes sense if we consider derogatory discourses as a coherent whole. The overall effect is to defuse the most unsettling aspect of veganism – the calling to account of omnivorism for its complicity in violence towards nonhuman animals. The association of veganism with some or other form of eccentricity amounts to a dissociation of veganism from animal rights activism, in spite of the links between the two within the activist community (Animal Aid 2009; Viva! 2009; and see Maurer 1990), and as discussed earlier, in vegans' own discourse. Despite the overwhelmingly negative portrayal of vegans and veganism thus far discussed, there were some apparent exceptions, to which we now turn.