| Summary: | Drawing on analyses of scientific knowledge and language from Foucault and Lyotard, this article explores the role of language in human-animal relations and human-animal ethics. The author examines several ways in which two linked manifestations of language—definitions and available vocabulary within a dominant discourse—aid in the production of linguistic or discursive borders between humans and other animals. Definitions of words such as “culture” or “cruelty” shape, among other things, our perceptions of animals as more or less like ourselves and what we consider reasonable to be done to them. Western scientific processes contribute to the vocabulary that is available to make legitimate knowledge claims about animals. Lyotard proposes the concept of “the social bond” that is created between humans through their everyday language and makes a distinction between this everyday language and scientific language. Using the examples presented in the article, the author contends that Western scientific language, as it relates to animals, also functions to contribute to the human social bond.
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