‘Criminal Beasts’: Metaphors that Reveal Common Oppression to Humans and Animals

Abstract

With the outburst of Covid-19, Chinese people were soon being singled out by western media as savage bat eaters, or even worse, virus-spreading pests. This literature review aims to analyze the power dimension in creating animalized criminals and criminalized animals to prove that the common oppression operates in similar patterns and ideologies against non-white human and non-human animals. While institutional and legal context play a fundamental role in constructing the hierarchy of oppressions, the study focuses on language use and media representation that links criminality to animality. By emphasizing speech use and metaphors, the study first proposes to draw upon common but problematic injustices in daily life for the readers. Secondly, since language use is rather noticeable to identify and change compared to legal contexts, changes of the power relation can be more easily made among readers.