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Understanding Linguistic Treatment Across Species: A Comparative Study At Zoo Knoxville, Dynestee S. Fields

Masters Theses

Zoos are unique locations that often bring the natural world into urban settings for the purposes of conducting research, engaging in conservation initiatives, and educating and entertaining the public (Miranda et al., 2023, p. 290). However, the version of nature that zoos construct can be imperfect in that zoos may obscure the reality of their environments and create discrepancies in their treatment of different species. Engaging with environmental communication scholarship that explores how humans consider the voices of nonhuman animals and align animal representations with human interests, I use an ecolinguistic framework to inquire into how nonhuman animals are treated …