THE DISCOURSES ON VEGANISM IN PHILOSOPHY POPULARISATION MAGAZINES IN BRAZIL AND FRANCE

ABSTRACT

In this article we compare the discourses of two philosophy popularisation magazines, one Brazilian and the other French. By doing so, we seek to answer two questions formulated in our postdoctoral project on the discourses of philosophy popularisation magazines in Brazil and France, namely: “How is philosophy presented in Brazilian and French magazines?” and “What is intended with philosophy popularisation in Brazil and France?”. To this end, we selected two articles on the topic of veganism in the Brazilian magazine Filosofia Ciência & Vida and in the French magazine Philosophie Magazine, both published in 2018. The methodology used in the analyses is the comparative discourse analysis, as it has been worked on in Brazil from a Bakhtinian perspective. Thus, we analyse how the evaluative intonations, through the lexical choices made by the authors of the Brazilian and French utterances, contribute to a favourable or not argumentation to veganism. The analysis of dialogic relationships and the forms of transmitting the alien discourse allow us to observe how the dialogue between different spheres of human activity takes place in both magazines, contributing to the elucidation of the role of philosophy popularisation in Brazilian and French magazines.

comparative discourse analysis; veganism; philosophy magazines; scientific popularisation

RESUMO

Neste artigo estudamos comparativamente os discursos de duas revistas de divulgação da filosofia, uma brasileira e outra francesa. Buscamos, assim, responder às duas questões formuladas no nosso projeto de pós-doutorado sobre os discursos das revistas de divulgação da filosofia no Brasil e na França, a saber: “Como a filosofia é apresentada nas revistas brasileiras e francesas?” e “O que se pretende com a divulgação da filosofia no Brasil e na França?”. Para tanto, selecionamos dois artigos sobre o tema do veganismo na revista brasileira Filosofia Ciência & Vida e na revista francesa Philosophie Magazine, ambos publicados em 2018. A metodologia empregada nas análises é a análise de discursos comparativa, conforme ela vem sendo trabalhada no Brasil numa perspectiva bakhtiniana. Dessa forma, analisamos como as entonações valorativas, mediante as escolhas lexicais feitas pelos autores dos enunciados brasileiro e francês, contribuem para uma argumentação favorável ou não ao veganismo. A análise das relações dialógicas e dos modos de transmissão do discurso alheio, por sua vez, permitem-nos observar como se dá o diálogo entre diferentes esferas da atividade humana em ambas as revistas, contribuindo para a elucidação do papel da divulgação da filosofia nas revistas brasileira e francesa.

análise de discursos comparativa; veganismo; revistas de filosofia; divulgação científica

Introduction

The two magazines analysed in this article — Filosofia Ciência & Vida (henceforth FC&V) and Philosophie Magazine (henceforth PM) — appeared in the same year: 2006. However, the reasons that led Brazil and France to publish their magazines are not exactly the same. In the first editorial of a special issue of FC&V (year I, No. 1), the journalist Faoze Chibli¹ justifies the creation of the Brazilian magazine: “A part of society has been crying out for a greater appreciation of the human sciences. Left in the background by the military developmentalist frenzy, this field of knowledge has seen its privileges diminished in favour of exact knowledge.” (CHIBLI, 2006, p, p.1, our translation). Soon afterwards, he adds: “But a consensus among academia, the media, and government sectors is beginning to bear fruit. Philosophy and sociology are now compulsory subjects at the secondary level. If it is not the definitive solution for humanists, it is a breath of fresh air and a sign” (CHIBLI, 2006, p, p.1, our translation). It can be seen that the first editorial of the Brazilian magazine evokes a relationship between the philosophical sphere (especially in its academic aspect) and the school sphere.

Scientific popularisation as a dialogue of spheres can be observed even more explicitly in the French context. Since its first editorial, the French magazine PM has marked the dialogue between the sphere of philosophy and that of journalism. The title of the year I, No. 1 editorial is precisely “Philosophy and journalism” [Philosophie et journalisme]. The editor in chief, Alexandre Lacroix,² states that

[in] the works of philosophy launched today, we are often surprised to find, alongside canonical references to Plato, Epicurus or Nietzsche, analyses of political events, blockbusters, daily news [...] It is in this particular context that the launch of Philosophie Magazine, whose ambition is precisely to reconcile philosophy and journalism, takes place. (LACROIX, 2006, p. 3, our translation).³

Bearing this in mind, we shall commence with the thesis, advocated by Grillo (2013), that considers scientific popularisation as a dialogue of spheres:

[...] we maintain that scientific popularisation is not identified with a specific sphere of human activity nor with a particular discursive genre, but that the utterances of scientific popularisation are constituted in the dialogue between the scientific sphere and other spheres of human activity, including here the higher levels of the ideology of the everyday. (GRILLO, 2013, p. 15, our translation).

It is from this perspective that we shall explore the discourses of the Brazilian magazine — arisen from a demand for reading in the field of the humanities and also for its presence in primary education —⁴ and of the French magazine — derived from the perception that contemporary philosophy itself had been evoking media issues in its writings, which would justify the appearance of a magazine which would also depart from these media events to explain philosophy to the general public.

In a master’s dissertation on works of philosophy aimed at the general public, Maubon (2010, p. 3, our translation) shows that, in France, “[the] democratisation of philosophy is an ancient project”,⁵ and mentions that the years preceding 2010 were marked by “a real passion for a certain type of philosophy [...], as witnessed by the success of certain types of works in bookshops, the strong media presence of the discipline, and the existence of true philosophers-vedettes”⁶ (MAUBON, 2010, p. 7, our translation). Oliveira and Aquino (2014, p. 54, our translation) describe the same period in Brazil as being marked by a “pronounced process of popularisation [of philosophy]”. The magazines analysed here make up this scenario. Analysing the discourses of philosophy popularisation magazines also implies understanding to what extent the popularisation of philosophy is possible. The relationship of the media with philosophy raises a fundamental problem: the “compatibility of media pressures with philosophical requirements”⁷ (MAUBON, 2010, p. 7, our translation).

It is also interesting to note that José Reis, one of the pioneers of scientific popularisation (henceforth SP) in Brazil, thought of this popularisation quite similar to what is proposed by the editors of PM for philosophy popularisation — relating it to journalism. Indeed, the very definition of SP presented by Reis in the 1960s already pointed to the need to take advantage of journalistically relevant facts in order to instigate in the public the desire to popularise a certain scientific phenomenon (cf. MASSARANI; ALVES, 2019).

Regarding the Brazilian context, Oliveira (2015) presents an interesting interpretative clue in his master’s dissertation on philosophy popularisation:

In an interview published in the first edition of the magazine Filosofia Ciência & Vida, in 2006, professor [Oswaldo Giacoia Jr., of UNICAMP] anticipated the quarrels between popularisation and vulgarisation of philosophy [...]. Between one practice and the other, in Giacoia’s view, popularisation should maintain the basic characteristics of philosophy, such as the rigorous analytical relationship with problems of the everyday, although requiring detachment [from them]; something distinct from the thematic-pragmatic and indiscriminate use of philosophical statements as cultural references or themes for literary and theatrical works, which would often tend towards vulgarisation. (OLIVEIRA, 2015, p, p. 13, our emphasis and translation).

In order to investigate how both analysed languages-cultures (Brazilian and French) popularise philosophy, we decided to compare how both magazines dealt with the same topic. Hence the necessity to look for a topic that had a journalistic scope and that was current in both countries. It was then that we arrived at the articles on veganism⁸ published in 2018, both in Brazil and in France. A quick reading of both articles already showed that, in Brazil, the topic was treated from the perspective of animal ethics (ethics being one of the branches of philosophy), while in France the same topic was approached in a more global manner, evoking animal ethics, but also environmental and food issues. For this reason, we decided to investigate, supported by two articles on veganism, the possibility(ies) of popularising philosophy in Brazilian and French magazines.

That said, the discourses on veganism in Brazilian and French philosophy magazines will be analysed from the perspective of comparative discourse analysis as it is being done in Brazil today (in Bakhtinian fashion). In comparative discourse analysis, texts of the same discourse genre are compared in two (or more) different languages-cultures. Genre works accordingly as a tertium comparationis, that is, the invariant that ensures the comparison between different languages-cultures. For this reason, in the analyses carried out in this study, we shall commence with the same genre: magazine article. In this way, we shall analyse how the evaluative intonations, through the lexical choices made by the authors of the Brazilian and French utterances, contribute to an argument favourable or not to veganism. Furthermore, since the editors of both journals evoke in their respective utterances the existence of a dialogue between different spheres of human activity, we shall analyse by means of conceptual categories, such as the forms of transmission of alien discourse and dialogic relationships, how this dialogue takes place. Such analysis will contribute to the elucidation of the role philosophy popularisation in Brazilian and French magazines.

This article is thus divided into three parts beyond the introduction and conclusion: the first on the selection of the corpus; the second on comparative discourse analysis of scientific popularisation; and the third, which presents the analyses of the discourses as such. The conclusions and references are presented at the end of the article.

Corpus selection

The corpus of the comparison made here are two texts of the genre “magazine article”, whose topic is veganism. More specifically, these are the articles entitled “The neglected suffering of animals” [O sofrimento negligenciado dos animais] (FC&V) and “When carnivores look themselves in the face” [Quand le carnivore se regarde en face] (PM). Both were published in issues launched in 2018. The following table summarises the data from these publications.

Table 1 – Analysed material

FILOSOFIA CIÊNCIA & VIDA (No. 139 - June 2018)	PHILOSOPHIE MAGAZINE (No. 117 - March 2018)
Cover story: “Lives that matter. How Philosophy can give meaning to existence, revealing who we are and our place in the world” [Vidas que importam. Como a Filosofia pode dar significado à existência, revelando quem somos e nosso lugar no mundo]	Cover story: “Ethics is within the steak. To be or not to be carnivorous?” [L’éthique est dans le steak. Être ou ne pas être carnivore]
Title of the article on veganism: “The neglected suffering of animals” [O sofrimento negligenciado dos animais]	Title of the article on veganism: When carnivores look themselves in the face [Quand le carnivore se regarde en face]

Source: Author’s elaboration.

We see from here that the title of the cover also points to a dialogue with different spheres in each of the languages-cultures analysed: in Brazil, veganism is approached from a more academic-scientific point of view, whereas in France the tone seems more journalistic, media-like. As for the articles analysed, the article of the Brazilian magazine appears in the “Ethics” tab. The French magazine’s article is part of the magazine’s cover dossier. We saw no problem in the fact that they are not two cover articles, since the French magazine is composed of a “cover dossier”, which, in turn, is composed of texts of various genres: articles on the topic addressed in the dossier, interviews, testimonies, etc. However, it is interesting to ask ourselves why the Brazilian magazine does not put the topic of veganism on the cover, while the French magazine does. We believe that this is precisely due to a more marked influence of the journalistic sphere in the French magazine. In both cultures veganism is a topic in vogue and that is certainly why both magazines decide to approach it. However, in France a number of media events had a great impact in 2018: attacks by vegan activists on the country’s (BOUCHER..., 2018) butcheries and slaughterhouses were depicted as violent. This also helps to explain the choice to deal with the topic in a broad dossier in the French magazine (the cover of which has a provocative title such as “Ethics is within the steak”). At first glance, we find it odd that the dossier gives voice to a butcher in a section with testimonials from meat industry workers, but the choice becomes more evident when we look at the context of the French publication. In Brazil we have not identified any specific event that might have motivated a publication on veganism, beyond the fact that the topic itself is increasingly recurring in various parts of the world. Let us see, in the following section, the methodology according to which the corpus will be analysed.

Methodological challenge: comparative discourse analysis of philosophy popularisation texts

Comparative discourse analysis is a very recent area in Brazil: it emerged twenty years ago in France and has been undergoing changes in the former country, where it has been approached from a Bakhtinian perspective. It was in the year 2000 that the research group “Comparison, language and culture in discursive perspectives” [Comparaison, langue et culture dans des perspectives discursives] was formed in France for this purpose at CEDISCOR (Centre for research on everyday and specialised discourses) [Centre de recherches sur les discours ordinaires et spécialisés], of the University of Paris 3. At the present time, other universities such as the Paris Descartes University [Université Paris Descartes] and the University of Paris 8 [Université Paris 8] also welcome researchers working in this line of research.

In a comparative analysis, as in discourse analysis in general, one undertakes a “description of the linguistic materiality of discourses — without description, we would not be in a linguistic perspective — and an interpretation of the data collected — without interpretation, the procedure would not be in the domain of DA [discourse analysis]”.⁹ (CLAUDEL et al., 2013, p. 22, our translation). Currently, in Brazil, the group Diálogo (CNPq/USP) has been approaching comparative discourse analysis from a Bakhtinian perspective. It is from this perspective that the analyses will be carried out in this article.

Another theoretical-methodological questioning made by this article concerns the SP discourse analysis. Discursive approaches to SP also date back approximately twenty years. In Brazil, we can cite the works of Grillo (2013) and Costa (2016; 2017). Comparative studies of SP are much more recent (see Grillo and Glushkova (2016) and Cavalcante Filho (2018)). Anyway, the challenge we face concerns the fact that there are no studies in discourse analysis on philosophy popularisation. Although the editor of FC&V has inserted philosophy in the field of human sciences (cf. introduction), it does not exactly belong to this field, as Savian Filho, Carvalho and Figueiredo ([20-], our translation) clarify: “philosophy is not part of the ‘human sciences’. For reasons of ease, it may not be a problem to include it under this heading, but it should be remembered that it transcends it; otherwise there would be no philosophy of mathematics, of the exact sciences, of biology, etc.” On that account, the role of our analysis will be to ascertain, among other things, whether it makes sense to speak of a popularisation of philosophy as a SP.

Analysing the discourses of philosophy popularisation also implies choosing the perspective in which they will be approached. Grillo, Giering and Motta-Roth (2016, p.4, our translation), in an editorial entitled “Discourse Perspectives of Science Divulgation/Populari[s]ation”, state that

The discursive phenomenon of science popularisation has been conceptualised in a number of ways from different theoretical perspectives [...] as a translation or reformulation of scientific discourse – this is the predominant approach within language studies; as a discursive genre; as a recontextualizing activity; as a construction dependent on the processes involved in media staging; and as a particular modality of dialogic relationship.

We believe that the most appropriate perspective to deal with our problem is the one that considers SP as a “particular modality of dialogic relationship”, for the perspective that views SP as a reformulation of scientific discourse places greater emphasis on the “linguistic marks that characterise this type of production”¹⁰ (cf. REBOUL-TOURÉ, 2004, p. 208, our translation), which seems to us more appropriate for the treatment of discourses of biological and/or exact sciences. Not that this perspective cannot account for the popularisation of philosophical discourse, but we believe that the dialogical framework, being broader, comprises some aspects that better explain the possibilities of popularising philosophy, as we shall see below. Moreover, as we pointed out in the introduction of this article, the editors themselves signal the existence of a dialogue between different spheres of human activity in each of the magazines analysed: to analyse this dialogue is actually possible from a perspective that views SP as a dialogue of spheres (cf. GRILLO, 2013).

The discourses on veganism in FC&V and PM

Veganism as a philosophical topic is addressed in ethics, more precisely in animal ethics. In the Brazilian magazine, the article analysed is entitled “The neglected suffering of animals” [O sofrimento negligenciado dos animais], and is located precisely in the tab “Ethics” of the magazine. In the French magazine, the article analysed is entitled “When carnivores look themselves in the face” [Quand le carnivore se regarde en face] and integrates the dossier “Ethics is within the steak” [L’éthique est dans le steak]. When we did a first comparative reading of the articles on veganism in FC&V and PM, two utterances seemed at first quite similar.

In the Brazilian magazine, the utterance that will be the focus of our analysis takes about two pages, and appears right after a brief introduction of the author – the academic Daniel Borgoni, at that time doctoral student in philosophy at UNIFESP – to the analysed article. It is about the subsection entitled “The facts” [Os fatos]:

Em geral, os animais que comemos e os produtos deles derivados vêm da criação intensiva. Embora existam instituições que regulam esse tipo de agronegócio, estresse, mutilações, enfim, sofrimentos de toda ordem estão presentes na produção de produtos de origem animal. Vejamos algumas situações que atestam isso.

Os frangos de corte são confinados de tal modo que o espaço individual para cada ave é tão restrito que eles ficam permanentemente em contato uns com os outros durante toda a sua vida. Para que eles não percam tempo escolhendo o seu alimento e engordem rapidamente, maximizando os investimentos, é comum cortar-lhes o bico. Como a superpopulação de frangos gera agressividade, tenta-se contornar isso diminuindo a luminosidade do ambiente, pois [1] “quando há luz normal, o estresse provocado pela superlotação e a ausência de escapes naturais para a energia das aves levam à deflagração de brigas, nas quais os frangos bicam as penas uns dos outros e, às vezes, matam-se e comem uns aos outros” (2010, p. 146). ¹¹ Contudo, além de não eliminar a agressividade, as aves [2] “não habituadas à luz intensa, a ruídos fortes ou a outras fontes de perturbação podem entrar em pânico em função de alguma alteração súbita” (2010, p. 152).

Muita dor está também presente na criação de suínos e de bovinos. Os porcos sofrem de obesidade e artrite por terem os seus movimentos limitados, costumam apresentar comportamentos estereotipados, tais como roer as celas que os prendem e [3] “nos ambientes superlotados em que vivem, esses animais, normalmente dóceis, às vezes recorrem ao canibalismo” (Regan, 2005, p. 112). Os bois têm seus chifres retirados para ocuparem menos espaço e não se machucarem, e são castrados para que os novilhos engordem mais rápido, denuncia Singer (2010, p. 214).

Na produção da carne de vitela o jovem animal é submetido a uma vida miserável, haja vista que [4] “a essência dessa produção é a alimentação de bezerros confinados e anêmicos com uma ração altamente proteica” (Singer, 2010, p. 190). Os seus joelhos ficam inchados e doloridos devido à posição estática em que os bezerros são obrigados a ficar. E, como não poderia deixar de denunciar, o foie gras (fígado de ganso), iguaria culinária cultuada por certos chefes de cozinha, envolve um processo de alimentação forçada no qual um funil é introduzido na garganta do animal.

Na produção de leite e de ovos os animais não humanos também sofrem muito. Na pecuária leiteira as vacas se tornam máquinas de produzir leite, tendo em vista que [5] “produzem até 44 litros de leite por dia, dez vezes sua capacidade normal. Esse excesso de peso tensiona o úbere e agrava os danos aos joelhos e ancas” (Regan, 2005, p. 117). Acrescente-se que muitas vacas sofrem de mastite, uma inflamação nas glândulas mamárias. E as galinhas poedeiras são presas de tal maneira que mal podem abrir as suas asas, ficando impossibilitadas de construir ninhos e neles botar ovos. Isso é uma fonte de sofrimento tão grande que o respeitado etólogo Konrad Lorenz afirmou que é a pior tortura que uma galinha pode sofrer (cf. Singer, 2010, p. 168).

Não bastasse vivermos numa sociedade na qual parte majoritária da população não está ciente do exposto, as agências publicitárias mostram o contrário. É comum vermos comerciais de achocolatados com vacas sorrindo, frangos felizes e saltitantes nos comerciais de indústrias de processados, animais sorrindo nas embalagens de alimentos de origem animal, enfim, não faltam propagandas que criam um simulacro da realidade do que acontece nos aviários, currais, granjas etc.

Por tudo o que foi dito não podemos nos abster da reflexão sobre os danos e os maus-tratos causados por humanos a outros seres sencientes na produção de carne, leite e ovos. É isso que começaremos a fazer agora. (FC&V, No. 139, June 2018, p. 22-24).¹²

The French utterance is part of the first section of the article analysed, written by Alexandre Lacroix, chief director of the magazine. This section is entitled “Harming Animals?” [Nuire aux animaux ?].¹³ Let us look at the utterance:

Consommer de la viande revient à cautionner et même à financer la souffrance des animaux dans les élevages intensifs et leur mise à mort dans les abattoirs. Ces dernières années ont été marquées par des scandales en cascade sur les conditions de production de la viande industrielle. Les poulets élevés en batterie subissent une opération de débecquage. L’appareil qui tranche le bec des poussins endommage les voies nasales, crée des plaies purulentes souvent infectées. Ils grandissent dans des hangars violemment éclairés. Les porcs ont la queue tranchée ; on leur meule les dents pour éviter les morsures ; les mâles sont castrés. Ils sont soustraits à leur mère après trois ou quatre semaines, au lieu de trois ou quatre mois naturellement. Les bâtiments sont surpeuplés. 20% des cochons ne résistent pas à ces conditions de vie et meurent avant l’abattage, pourtant prévu cent quatre-vingts jours après la naissance seulement. Des doses massives d’antibiotiques sont administrées aux porcs, ovins et bovins durant l’élevage. Ce qui présente un double danger : ces espèces développent des infections antibio-résistantes ; les consommateurs avalent à leur insu des doses d’antibiotiques, au risque de rendre leurs propres traitements moins efficaces. En pisciculture, le tableau est encore moins rose : les poissons sont élevés dans des bassins bondés, souillés par leurs déjections. Comme ils se blessent mutuellement à coups de nageoires, des antibiotiques sont saupoudrés sur l’eau afin que les plaies ne dégénèrent pas. Curieusement, avant même que les journalistes d’investigation ou qu’une association militante, L214, fassent sortir ce type d’informations de la filière carnée, un philosophe, Peter Singer, professeur d’éthique appliquée à Princeton, avait largement décrit ces pratiques dans La Libération animale (1975), qui a lancé le concept de spécisme.[1] « Les racistes, y écrit Peter Singer, violent le principe d’égalité en donnant plus de poids aux intérêts des membres de leur propre race lorsqu’il y a conflit entre ces intérêts et ceux d’une autre race. Les sexistes violent le princ[ip]e d’égalité en favorisant les intérêts de leur propre sexe. De même, les spécistes font primer les intérêts de leur propre espèce sur les intérêts plus grands des membres des autres espèces. »En clair, il n’est pas spéciste de tuer un ours blanc pour sauver sa vie ; mais il est spéciste de tuer un bœuf pour le manger, car l’animal éprouve plus d’intérêt à rester vivant que nous n’avons de nécessité de déguster son entrecôte. (PM, No. 117, Mar. 2018, p. 50-51).¹⁴

Let us see how an analysis based on the Bakhtinian categories of evaluative intonation, dialogic relationships and forms of transmission of alien discourse allows us to understand the discourses on veganism in the Brazilian and French magazines.

An argumentation favourable or not to veganism

The author of FC&V’s article assumes that readers are unaware of the suffering of animals in the meat industry, a suffering which, according to the title of the article, is “neglected” (we live “in a society in which the majority of the population is not aware of the above”). In the French magazine, PM, the author assumes that readers have already become aware of the facts reported by the French media, all the more so as “recent years have been marked by a cascade of scandals about the conditions of industrial meat production”, according to the above utterance. What would be new to the presumed French reader is that a philosopher has already addressed these facts long before, as the final passage of the example shows. Although they may have different backgrounds, both utterances focus on an eloquent description of the sufferings of animals, causing the same effect on the reader: an aversion to the mistreatment to which these animals are subjected.

As we announced in the introduction, our analyses are based on Bakhtinian-inspired comparative discourse analysis. Pistori has shown, in a series of articles published in recent years (2018, 2014, etc.), that it is possible to articulate Bakhtinian concepts with concepts derived from rhetoric:

To join Bakhtinian concepts to those taken from ancient and/or new rhetoric may seem strange to some, considering the several negative evaluations regarding the latter in the work of Bakhtin and the Circle. However, several works have found that such links are either possible or productive as they help us understand the way persuasion is built, especially by means of concepts such as appreciative intonation, dialogism, double-voicedness and authoritarian word [...] (PISTORI, 2014, p. 164, our translation).

In another article from 2018, the author shows that, for Aristotle, the pathos is characterised by “the dispositions it creates in the audience” (PISTORI, 2018, p. 74), and that in Bakhtin there is also the “consider[ation] [of] the addressee and the anticipation of his responsive attitude (BAKHTIN, 2006a, p. 302)” (PISTORI, 2018, p. 75). In the examples analysed, we see that their authors offer rational arguments for the reader to reflect on meat consumption (the author of FC&V calls the analysed section “The facts”); but we can notice that their authors give an emotional tone to these presented facts in order to arouse passions in the “audience”. In the excerpt from Pistori (2014) quoted above, we find the term “appreciative intonation”; in an article of 2016, the same author uses the term “evaluative intonation” when she states that, in the corpus analysed by her, “the evaluative intonation [as well as the dialogic relationships] constitute the argumentation” (PISTORI, 2016, p, p. 187, our translation). Thus, before we proceed to the analysis, we need to clarify what the intonations for the Bakhtin Circle are.

In the work The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, Medvedev (2016) clarifies the relationship between two concepts: that of social evaluation and that of expressive intonation. At the beginning he offers a definition of social evaluation, which would be “[...] the element which unites the material presence of the word with its meaning” (MEDVIÉDEV, 2016, p. 183).¹⁵,¹⁶ This definition is presented after the author’s previous discussion in the field of literature on the method of the formalists, who, according to him, would have “fear[ed] [...] meaning in art” (MEDVIÉDEV, 2016, p. 182).¹⁷ Medvedev (2016) argues that social evaluation should integrate the study of literature into the sociological method, stressing that “social evaluation is not the exclusive property of poetry. It is present in every active word to the extent that the word enters the concrete and individual utterance. The linguist does not engage in social evaluation, since he is not concerned with concrete forms of the utterance”. (MEDVIÉDEV, 2016, p. 183).¹⁸ In a recent article, we discussed the importance of the enunciative and discursive categories present in the work of the Bakhtin Circle for comparative discourse analysis as it has been approached in Brazil from a Bakhtinian point of view (cf. SARDÁ, 2021). What we have in the Circle’s work, with the discussion on social evaluation and expressive intonation, is the creation of discursive categories that would transcend the mastery of language without disregarding it nevertheless. It is only in later texts, such as The Problem of the Text (2011 [1959-1961])¹⁹ and Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (2018 [1963]),²⁰ that Bakhtin will mention the creation of metalinguistics, the programme at the origin of Dialogical Discourse Analysis (cf. BRAIT, 2018). But the following passage from Medvedev’s 1928 text already shows how the study of the “choice and evaluation of linguistic elements” articulates the linguistic and extralinguistic levels:

Such an abstraction [the abstraction operated by linguistics] is completely permissible and necessary, and is dictated by the cognitive and practical goals of linguistics itself. Without it the concept of language as a system could not be developed. Therefore, it is possible and necessary to study the functions of language and its elements within the poetic construction, as well as its functions in the various types of everyday utterances, oratorical addresses, scholarly formulations, and so on. It is true that this study must be guided by linguistics, but it will not be linguistic. Only the forms and goals of corresponding ideological formations are able to provide guiding principles for the selection and evaluation of linguistic elements. (MEDVIÉDEV, 2016, p. 142, our emphasis).²¹

In other words, it is at the enunciative-discursive level that social evaluation can be understood.²² Social evaluation determines the speaker’s choices for a particular word, expression, etc.:

Social evaluation actualizes the utterance both from the standpoint of its factual presence and the standpoint of its semantic meaning. It defines the choice of subject, word, form, and their individual combination within the bounds of the given utterance. It also defines the choice of content, the selection of form, and the connection between form and content. (MEDVIÉDEV, 2016, p. 184).²³

Furthermore, Medvedev (2016, p.185) adds that “[i]t is impossible to understand the concrete utterance without accustoming oneself to its values, without understanding the orientation of its evaluations in the ideological environment.”²⁴ For this reason, understanding the dynamics of the spheres of human activity (or ideological spheres), their dialogue with the discourses of philosophy popularisation in the magazines of Brazil and France, is essential for the understanding of the discourses on veganism present therein. Social evaluation is therefore a broad concept. No discourse is neutral: it is the authors of the articles who choose the appropriate words and expressions to address the topic of veganism; however, they do so in accordance with the “ideological environment”. Thus, a discourse influenced by the academic sphere will not adopt the same “tone” as a discourse whose influence is the journalistic sphere. It is through the intonations that social evaluation will take shape.

Medvedev (2016, p.185, our emphasis) makes it clear that “[s]ocial evaluation defines all aspects of the utterance, totally permeates it, but finds its most pure and typical expression in expressive intonation.” ²⁵ The reading of Marxism and the Philosophy of Language (henceforth MPL) by Vološinov (2018) is essential for the deepening of this question.²⁶ Vološinov (2018) establishes a link between (social) evaluation and evaluative accent:

Any word used in actual speech possesses not only theme and meaning in the referential, or content, sense of these words, but also value judgement: i.e., all referential contents produced in living speech are said or written in conjunction with a specific evaluative accent. There is no such thing as a word without an evaluative accent. (VOLÓCHINOV, 2018, p. 233).²⁷

To explain the evaluative accent, Vološinov (2018) analyses in detail the concept of expressive intonation. This would help in the transmission of social evaluation: “The most obvious, but, at the same time, the most superficial aspect of social value judgement incorporated in the word is that which is conveyed with the help of expressive intonation” (VOLÓCHINOV, 2018, p. 233).²⁸ Such intonation seems to have a prosodic character, since different ways in which the same word can be emphasised in a verbal discourse are quoted (pages 233-235). To understand the meaning of the different intonations given to the same word by each of the participants in a conversation, it is necessary to know the “immediate pragmatic context” of these participants (cf. VOLÓCHINOV, 2019, p. 121).²⁹ Nonetheless, as Vološinov explains, “not all linguistic value judgments are like that. We may take any utterance whatsoever, say, an utterance that encompasses the broadest possible semantic spectrum and assumes the widest possible social audience, and we shall still see that, in it, an enormous importance belongs to evaluation.” (VOLÓCHINOV, 2018, p. 236).³⁰ This will become clearer with the analysis of the discourses on veganism in the magazines studied here. In similar cases of popularisation discourses written for a large audience,

[...] value judgement [...] will not allow for even minimally adequate expression by intonation, but it will be the determinative factor in the choice and deployment of the basic elements that bear the meaning of the utterance. No utterance can be put together without value judgement. Every utterance is above all an evaluative orientation. Therefore, each element in a living utterance not only has a meaning but also has a value. Only the abstract element, perceived within the system of language and not within the structure of an utterance, appears devoid of value judgement. (VOLÓCHINOV, 2018, p. 236).³¹

In an essay published in 1926 — “Discourse in Life and Discourse in Art” —, Vološinov (2019) had already addressed the issue of social evaluation, being quite clear in his explanation of the intonation (which maintains a close relation to social evaluation):

A healthy social value judgement remains within life and from that position organises the very form of an utterance and its intonation, but it does not at all aim to find suitable expression in the content side of discourse. Once a value judgement shifts from formal factors to content, we may be sure that a reevaluation is in the offing. Thus, a viable value judgement exists wholly without incorporation into the content of discourse and is not derivable therefrom; instead, it determines the very selection of the verbal material and the form of the verbal whole. It finds its purest expression in intonation. Intonation establishes a firm link between verbal discourse and the extraverbal context-genuine, living intonation moves verbal discourse beyond the border of the verbal, so to speak. (VOLÓCHINOV, 2019, p. 122-123, author’s emphasis).³²

In this same work the author states that “[...] the unified purview on which an utterance depends can expand in both space and time: The ‘assumed’ may be that of the family, clan, nation, class and may encompass days or years or whole epochs.” (VOLÓCHINOV, 2019, p. 121, author’s emphasis).³³ When we use the term “evaluative intonation” in our analyses, we shall observe, for example, how the lexical choices made by the authors, in the philosophy popularisation magazines published in Brazil and France, relate to a social evaluation of veganism. As we have seen before, there is a whole conception of ideology shared by the authors of the Circle — especially Vološinov and Medvedev — which runs through the concept of social evaluation. Let us now return to the analysis of the corpus.

In the Brazilian magazine’s utterance, the author begins the argumentation by standing against the exploitation of animals in the meat industry. This argumentation starts with the employment of a concessive conjunction (“although”) and is followed by a lexical choice that aims to provoke horror and compassion in its readers, by using nouns that characterise these mistreatments, such as “stress”, “mutilation” and “suffering”: “Although there are institutions that regulate this type of agribusiness, stress, mutilations, in short, sufferings of all kinds are present in the production of products of animal origin”. Still in the field of lexical choices, other elements mark the way the author of the utterance evaluates the situation of animals in the meat industry. We can cite other nouns such as “aggressiveness”, “overcrowding” and “pain”, as well as descriptions of the psychic and physical suffering to which animals are subjected when they “panic”, have a “restricted individual space” and hear “loud noises”. Animals are “humanised” in the Brazilian utterance, and always described as beings who are subjected to mistreatment. The author explicitly says that this violence is perpetrated by human beings: “mistreatment by humans on other sentient beings”, that is, beings who, like us humans, also feel pain. For each animal we have the association of a specific suffering, with emphasis on a vocabulary of pathologies: pigs suffer from “obesity” and “arthritis”; calves have “swollen and painful [...] knees”; cows suffer from “mastitis”, a disease characterised by “an inflammation in the mammary glands”. As we have adopted in this article a perspective that considers the work of Bakhtin and the Circle, the utterance here is seen as a concrete utterance. In the words of Higashi (2019, p.108, our translation),

[...] utterance [...] understood as described in the dialogic theory of the Circle [is] a real unit of discursive communication, a social act, a totality of meaning, a peculiar material set — sound, pronounced (written), visual — and a part of social reality, since, as Medvedev (2012 [1928]) well theorised it, the presence of utterance is historically and socially significant. Thus, if utterance is socio-historical, it is necessarily enveloped by an axiological atmosphere and an evaluative orientation that also determine all its aspects. In Medvedev’s view, the evaluative intonation is the most vivid manifestation of social evaluation, since in choosing words, the speaker/writer selects, confronts and combines the expressive accents included in them.

In this way, we understand that the author of the Brazilian magazine’s utterance selects words that refer to suffering in order to emphasise what occurs in intensive animal rearing in industries. The selected vocabulary only refers to the field of the pleasant when it mentions advertising agencies. There we have “smiling cows” and “happy, bouncy chickens”. A direct criticism is made to these advertising agencies, for given what was exposed before, such animals could not be happy. The author evokes the advertising sphere because he believes that the majority of the population is not conscious of the mistreatment of animals by the meat industry. Still according to Higashi (2019, p. 108, our translation),

The speaker’s/writer’s intonation is also guided by the presumed social evaluations and the speaker’s attitude towards the interlocutor, an aspect which acquires great importance in the construction of the utterance insofar as it also regulates the selection of the material and the form of the verbal whole.

We also note that the author of the Brazilian utterance employs the usual vocabulary of discourses in defence of animals and shows empathy for them, as in the case of “young animal”, “non-human animals” and “sentient animals”. In short, all the argumentation is built in such a manner as to convince the reader that there is great suffering inflicted on animals by the industry.

The French magazine’s utterance also begins by mentioning the intensive rearing of animals in slaughterhouses, stating that consuming them means “condoning” and “financing” this suffering. The choice of words is made in such a manner as to provoke a feeling of horror and compassion for animals, as in “suffering” [souffrance] and “death” [mort]. The author will similarly describe, as in the Brazilian example, the details of this suffering for each species of animal involved, sometimes focusing on the diseases generated: “Battery-farmed chickens” [poulets élevés en batterie], “violently lit sheds” [hangars violemment éclairés], “damages the nasal passages” [les voies nasales [endommagées]], “purulent wounds that are often infected” [plaies purulentes souvent infectées], “antibiotic-resistant infections” [infections antibiotic-resistant], “the fish are raised in crowded tanks, soiled by their droppings” [[d]es poissons [...] élevés dans des bassins bondés, souillés par leurs déjections”], etc. This list of the sufferings of animals comes after the mention of the sphere of journalism and the “cascade of scandals” to which the French reader would already be accustomed by the media (unlike what occurs in the Brazilian utterance, whose author maintains that such events are barely known).

Since the subject of the article analysed is veganism, it is also interesting to note the elements that are absent from the French magazine’s list. In the Brazilian utterance, the suffering of animals in the process that culminates in the consumption of their meat, as well as in the production of milk and eggs, is described. Even the production of foie gras is described in the Brazilian context (and not in the French context, from which this food, considered a delicacy, originates). In the French utterance, the list is interrupted after the exposure of fish suffering; that is, the issue of milk and egg production is not addressed – which would be expected in a text whose topic is veganism. Such an aspect corroborates the fact that all this would already be known to the reader (the author of the article is only recapitulating known facts and therefore does not even need to list them until the end). From an argumentative point of view, we conclude that the author of the Brazilian utterance intends to persuade the reader to rethink meat consumption, while the same does not seem to occur in the French utterance (even though both utterances present elements that appeal to the reader’s emotions). It is also important to note that in another passage of the articles in question — the utterances analysed here are cuttings from a larger article — the Brazilian author states, in the first person, that a decrease in meat consumption would already be welcome: “Although the ideal is to abstain from animal based products, given the brutal suffering that is inflicted on them, I believe that the least reasonable would be a drastic decrease in the consumption of meat, eggs, milk and their derivatives” (FC&V, No. 139, June 2018, p. 27 [our emphasis]). In the French context, the author states the following:

So there are three serious moral reasons for opting for vegetarianism or veganism. Yet most readers of this article, even if they wholeheartedly agree with each of these arguments, will not make the leap. Neither will the author of these lines. Why not? First, because of a phenomenon called, in ethical philosophy, acrasy³⁴ (PM, No. 117, Mar. 2018, p. 51, author’s emphasis).

In the last paragraph of the article analysed, the author refers to the concept of acrasy (from the Greek akrasía, “intemperance”), which concerns the lack of will and determination. This fact shows that all the arguments presented were not intended to convince the reader to consider veganism as a food option, which is curious, since the French magazine had already shown by the lexical choice that it would consider the food issue in its approach to the topic, as we announced at the beginning of the analyses. If we look at the very title of the dossier, it becomes even more evident that the aim of the French magazine was not to convince the reader to consider the possibility of adopting veganism, for we have as a subtitle the utterance “Être ou ne pas être carnivore” [To be or not to be carnivorous]. But we know that hardly any human being maintains an exclusively carnivorous diet; the most appropriate term would be “omnivorous”.

A dialogue between different spheres of human activity

In a brief reading of the two utterances that make up our analysis, it is clear at the outset that FC&V’s article presents striking features of a more “school” didacticism than the one present in PM’s utterance. The use of the “inclusive we” is a feature of this didacticism; the author guides the reader in passages such as “Let us look at some situations that attest to this”, at the end of the first paragraph, and in “This is what we are going to do now”, at the end of the last paragraph reproduced. Such a fact reinforces that philosophy popularisation, in Brazil, takes place through a dialogue with the school sphere. In other words: not only do the editors express the will to establish this dialogue, but the very discourse of Brazilian magazines clearly presents these marks. The way the authors treat the presumed readers in the two languages-cultures can offer clues about the characteristics of philosophy popularisation in both analysed languages-cultures, because, as explained by Grillo (2006, p, p.146, our translation), “the relation of the utterance with its co-enunciators — the anticipation of their responsive attitude, the knowledge of their social position, their tastes, their preferences, etc. — is also conditioned by the specificities of a field.” Thus, the sphere of philosophy popularisation in Brazil seems to be closer to the didactic sphere (writing similar to textbooks).

That being said, as we observe the forms of transmission of alien discourse, it seems to us that the French magazine presupposes a more informed reader (who is aware of the recent discourses of the media on veganism, which have come to the surface as a result of the actions of vegan activists), whereas the Brazilian magazine seems closer to pure philosophy, prioritising a closer dialogue with the academic and philosophical spheres. As a result, the author of the Brazilian utterance anchors all his discourse in the philosophical discourse. There is a separation in paragraphs, each having as its topic the suffering linked to a specific animal or group of animals (chicken; pigs and bovines; veal; milk and egg production) and a quotation from a philosopher who has already addressed the topic (the main one being Peter Singer). Vološinov (2018, p. 244)³⁵ says the following about the paragraph:

Were we to probe deeper into the linguistic nature of paragraphs, we would surely find that in certain crucial respects paragraphs are analogous to exchanges in dialogue. The paragraph is something like a vitiated dialogue worked into the body of a monologic utterance. Behind the device of partitioning speech in units, which are termed paragraphs in their written form, lie orientation toward listener or reader and calculation of the latter’s possible reactions.

For Vološinov (2018, p.252), “transmission takes into account a third person — the person to whom the reported utterances are being transmitted.”³⁶ In view of the argumentative dimension of the discourse in question, we realise that the aim of the author is to validate this discourse by showing the reader that it is a research based on studies demonstrating the practice of violence against animals (and that it is not, therefore, only his opinion as author). This tendency is so strong that, for each paragraph, we have a passage in quotes with preset direct discourse (cf. Volóchinov (2018). Examples of this tendency are the passages from [1] to [5] highlighted in bold in the example of FC&V above. However, we highlight the following excerpt in order to better illustrate this tendency:

[...] Os frangos de corte são confinados de tal modo que o espaço individual para cada ave é tão restrito que eles ficam permanentemente em contato uns com os outros durante toda a sua vida. Para que eles não percam tempo escolhendo o seu alimento e engordem rapidamente, maximizando os investimentos, é comum cortar-lhes o bico. Como a superpopulação de frangos gera agressividade, tenta-se contornar isso diminuindo a luminosidade do ambiente, pois [1] “quando há luz normal, o estresse provocado pela superlotação e a ausência de escapes naturais para a energia das aves levam à deflagração de brigas, nas quais os frangos bicam as penas uns dos outros e, às vezes, matam-se e comem uns aos outros” (2010, p. 146). Contudo, além de não eliminar a agressividade, as aves [2] “não habituadas à luz intensa, a ruídos fortes ou a outras fontes de perturbação podem entrar em pânico em função de alguma alteração súbita” (2010, p. 152). [...]³⁷

We see in the excerpt above that the two passages in direct speech (in bold) are preceded by indirect speeches. In other words: all the author’s argumentation is inspired by Singer (2010). We notice therefore that the influence of the academic sphere on the Brazilian magazine’s utterance is remarkable. Moreover, all the literal quotations and paraphrases present the complete reference, with year and page — exactly the opposite of what happens in the French utterance. This one is written in a single paragraph, and all the examples on animal exploitation form a kind of list, as we have announced before.³⁸ For Vološinov (2018 [1929], p. 244),³⁹ “[t]he weaker this orientation and calculation are, the less organised, as regards paragraphs, our speech will be”. To put it another way, the French author does not take into account the reader’s considerations about what is being said/written, since he has already had access to that information by the media. On the one hand, the Brazilian magazine gives greater relevance to philosophical discourses, for they set the tone in the writing of the article, substantiating each of the passages; on the other hand, the French magazine departs from information already known to arrive at the philosophical discourse, with the quotation from Peter Singer closing the paragraph. In this quotation, furthermore, a philosophical concept developed by this author is presented: the concept of speciesism:

[...] Curieusement, avant même que les journalistes d’investigation ou qu’une association militante, L214, fassent sortir ce type d’informations de la filière carnée, un philosophe, Peter Singer, professeur d’éthique appliquée à Princeton, avait largement décrit ces pratiques dans La Libération animale (1975), qui a lancé le concept de spécisme. « Les racistes, y écrit Peter Singer, violent le principe d’égalité en donnant plus de poids aux intérêts des membres de leur propre race lorsqu’il y a conflit entre ces intérêts et ceux d’une autre race. Les sexistes violent le princ[ip]e d’égalité en favorisant les intérêts de leur propre sexe. De même, les spécistes font primer les intérêts de leur propre espèce sur les intérêts plus grands des membres des autres espèces. »⁴⁰

We see that the author of the French utterance evokes both the sphere of journalism and that of vegan activism, before ending the utterance with the quotation from Peter Singer. An allusion is made to the association L214, as if the French reader were already conscious of it. This is because veganism is a topic in vogue in both cultures analysed, though in France a rather specific event seems to have given rise to the publication of this topic in magazine PM. More precisely, in 2018, “vegan activists” — as they were called by the French media —committed a series of actions considered violent against butchers and slaughterhouses in France, such as throwing stones at shop windows and trespassing on properties in order to denounce the violence to which animals are subjected. This point has a bearing on the French magazine’s utterance, as evidenced by the dialogic relationship with another utterance: a media utterance on the manifestations of vegan activists. The Brazilian media reported that the association L214 took a stand against the attacks by other vegan associations on French butchers and slaughterhouses in 2018 (ATIVISTAS..., 2018). According to Bakhtin (2018, p. 209), “Dialogic relationships, therefore, are extralinguistic. But at the same time they must not be separated from the realm of discourse, that is, from language as a concrete integral phenomenon. Language lives only in the dialogic interaction of those who make use of it.”⁴¹ This is why, in order to understand and to analyse an utterance in a French magazine, it is important to know the cultural context in which it is inserted (and not only to know language from the point of view of the code). We notice, however, that although the French magazine dialogues with journalistic discourse, it is the alien discourse of the philosopher Peter Singer, in direct speech, that concludes the argumentation presented in the French utterance: it is the voice of philosophy that resonates as the final argument on the subject matter.

Conclusion

The discourses on veganism have different purposes in the Brazilian and French magazines. In Brazil, the author of the analysed utterance stands as a defender of veganism, while in France its author is ambiguous in this regard. Perhaps we could say that the discourse of the Brazilian magazine FC&V is closer to philosophy popularisation, in the sense pointed out by Giacoia Jr. (cited in the introduction of this article) of analysing everyday problems yet detached from them, given that its author intends to guide the reader to reflect on the problem posed. In other words, in the Brazilian magazine the author seeks to convince the reader of the suffering of animals in order to make them reflect on the implications of the consumption of meat and derivatives. The French magazine PM, on the other hand, would be more concerned with presenting the topic without pretensions of this kind: the role of the SP of philosophy would be, here, to present the concepts and their origins anchored in current topics, albeit without necessarily proposing a philosophical reflection on such concepts.

Rather than coming to a conclusion on this much discussed topic nowadays, the analyses carried out in this article helped us to answer the two questions posed in our post-doctoral project: “How is philosophy presented in Brazilian and French magazines?” and “What is intended with philosophy popularisation in Brazil and France?” We found that the Brazilian magazine FC&V aspires to a popularisation of philosophy anchored in academic rigour and school didacticism, whereas the French magazine PM tends to a scientific popularisation, in the sense of explaining philosophical concepts based on media events, yet not necessarily inviting the reader to reflect on these concepts in order to change behaviour or rethink ways of life.

The specificity of the Brazilian magazine can be explained by the demand of the Brazilian public for readings in the area of human sciences. Hence the necessity to value philosophy (maintaining an academic rigour), which was left aside during the period of the military dictatorship in Brazil, as the FC&V’s editorial reminds us. In addition, the Brazilian magazine is distributed in public schools in the country, thus contributing to the dialogue with the academic and school spheres. The French magazine, in turn, arises from the need to combine philosophy and journalism. As a consequence, an influence of the journalistic sphere is expected in these discourses, which is not the case in the Brazilian context, even when one departs from a subject such as veganism, increasingly present in the media today.

These results complement others that we have presented in previous studies (cf. SARDÁ, 2020), in which we learnt that France has a more specialised market in philosophy popularisation, whereby journalists directly popularise this discipline without going through the discourses of the academic and school spheres, as was the case in the Brazilian context. Moreover, we believe that the results achieved here may serve as a guiding thread for future research on other genres found in the analysed magazines.

Acknowledgements

This research was made possible thanks to funding from FAPESP – São Paulo Research Foundation (Proc. nº 2017/12306-8). We are also grateful to the translator Guilherme Soares dos Santos (ORCID: 0000-0002-3497-6138; [e-mail]) for the English version of this article.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ATIVISTAS veganos defendem ação violenta contra açougues na França. Folha de São Paulo, São Paulo, 11 out. 2018. Disponível em: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2018/10/ativistas-veganos-defendem-acao-violenta-contra-acougues-na-franca.shtml Acesso em: 10 fev. 2022.
  » https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mundo/2018/10/ativistas-veganos-defendem-acao-violenta-contra-acougues-na-franca.shtml
• BAKHTIN, M. M. Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski. 5.ed. Tradução de Paulo Bezerra. Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2018.
• BAKHTIN, M. M. O problema do texto na linguística, na filologia e em outras ciências humanas. In: BAKHTIN, M. M. Estética da criação verbal. Tradução de Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: WMF Martins Fontes, 2011. p. 307-335.
• BOUCHER assassin! Le Quotidien, [s. l.], 28 set. 2018. Disponível em: https://lequotidien.lu/a-la-une/boucher-assassin-la-guerre-de-la-viande-derape/ Acesso em: 10 fev. 2022.
  » https://lequotidien.lu/a-la-une/boucher-assassin-la-guerre-de-la-viande-derape/
• BRAIT, B. Análise e teoria do discurso. In: BRAIT, B. (org.). Bakhtin: outros conceitos-chave. São Paulo: Contexto, 2018. p. 9-31.
• CAVALCANTE FILHO, U. A construção composicional em enunciados de divulgação científica: uma análise dialógico-comparativa de Ciência Hoje e La Recherche. Linha D’Água, São Paulo, v.31, n.3, p.99-120, 2018.
• CHIBLI, F. Editorial. In: Filosofia Ciência & Vida: especial Grécia, São Paulo, Ano I, n.1, p.1, 2006.
• CLAUDEL, C. et al. Langue, discours et culture : vingt ans de recherche et comparaison. In: CLAUDEL, C. et al. Cultures, discours, langues: nouveaux abordages. Lyon: Lambert-Lucas, 2013. p. 15-45.
• COSTA, L. R. Ideologia e divulgação científica: uma análise bakhtiniana do discurso da revista Ciência Hoje. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v.11, n.2, p. 33-5, 2016.
• COSTA, L. R. A questão da ideologia no Círculo de Bakhtin e os embates no discurso de divulgação científica da revista Ciência Hoje. São Paulo: Ateliê editorial, 2017.
• GRILLO, S. V. de C. Esfera e campo. In: BRAIT, B. (org.). Bakhtin: outros conceitos-chave. São Paulo: Contexto, 2006. p.133-160.
• GRILLO, S. V. de C. Divulgação científica: linguagens, esferas e gêneros. 2013. 333 f. Tese (Livre-docência) – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2013.
• GRILLO, S. V. de C.; GIERING, M. E.; MOTTA-ROTH, D. Perspectivas discursivas da divulgação/popularização da ciência. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v. 11, n.2, p. 3-13, 2016.
• GRILLO, S. V. de C.; GLUSHKOVA, M. A divulgação científica no Brasil e na Rússia: um ensaio de análise comparativa de discursos. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v. 11, n.2, p. 69-92, 2016.
• HIGASHI, A. M. F. O destinatário inscrito nas exposições de divulgação científica do Catavento Cultural e Educacional. Orientadora: Sheila Vieira de Camargo Grillo. 2019. 339 f. Tese (Doutorado em Linguística) – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2019.
• LACROIX, A. Éditorial. Philosophie et Journalisme. Philosophie Magazine, Paris, n.1, p.3, 2006.
• MASSARANI, L. M.; ALVES, J. P. A visão de divulgação científica de José Reis. Ciência e Cultura, São Paulo, v. 71, n.11, p. 56-59, 2019.
• MEDVIÉDEV, P. N. O método formal nos estudos literários: introdução crítica a uma poética sociológica. Tradução de Sheila Grillo e Ekaterina Vólkova Américo. São Paulo: Contexto, 2016.
• MAUBON, L. Les ouvrages philosophiques à destination du grand public: pour quelle philosophie? Orientador: Gérard Wormser. 2010. 76 f. Mémoire d’étude (Master 2 Livre et Savoirs) – École Nationale Supérieure des Sciences de l’Information et des Bibliothèques, Lyon, 2010.
• OLIVEIRA, G. M. V. de S. Da popularização da filosofia à expertise filosófica: uma problematização do papel do intelectual na mídia (revista Cult 1997-2013). Orientador: Julio Groppa Aquino. 2015. 189 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Educação) – Faculdade de Educação, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2015.
• OLIVEIRA, G. M. V. de S.; AQUINO, J. G. O filósofo expert? a popularização da filosofia e o governo da conduta. Revista Sul-Americana de Filosofia e Educação, Brasília, n.23, p.55-80, 2014.
• PISTORI, M. H. C. Ethos e pathos no discurso do Ministro-Relator do Supremo Tribunal Federal. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v.13, n.1, p. 71-93, 2018.
• PISTORI, M. H. C. Relações dialógicas e persuasão. Linha D’Água, São Paulo, v. 29, n. 2, p.173-193, dez. 2016.
• PISTORI, M. H. C.. Dialogia na persuasão “publicitária”. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v. 9, n. 1, p. 148-167, 2014.
• REBOUL-TOURÉ, S. Écrire la vulgarisation scientifique aujourd’hui. In: COLLOQUE SCIENCES, MÉDIAS ET SOCIÉTÉ, 2004, Lyon. Actes [...]. Lyon: ENS-LSH, 2004. P.195-212. Disponível em: http://sciences-medias.ens-lyon.fr/article.php3?id_article=65 Acesso em: 20 fev. 2020.
  » http://sciences-medias.ens-lyon.fr/article.php3?id_article=65
• SARDÁ, D. N. A análise de discursos comparativa no Brasil: uma reflexão a partir da noção de categoria. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, v. 16, n. 2, p.153-177, abr.-jun. 2021.
• SARDÁ, D. N. A divulgação da filosofia nas revistas Philosophie Magazine e Filosofia Ciência & Vida. Cadernos de Estudos Linguísticos, Campinas, v. 62, p.1-15, e020020, 2020.
• SARDÁ, D. N. As listas e o efeito de apagamento enunciativo nos livros didáticos de filosofia. Diálogo das Letras, Pau dos Ferros, v.6, n.2, p. 194-213, 2017.
• SAVIAN FILHO, J.; CARVALHO, M.; FIGUEIREDO, V. B. de. A BNCC e o futuro da filosofia no Ensino Médio – Hipóteses. ANPOF, [s. l., 20-]. Disponível em: http://anpof.org/portal/index.php/es-ES/artigos-em-destaque/1584-a-bncc-e-o-futuro-da-filosofia-no-ensino-medio-hipoteses Acesso em: 19 fev. 2020.
  » http://anpof.org/portal/index.php/es-ES/artigos-em-destaque/1584-a-bncc-e-o-futuro-da-filosofia-no-ensino-medio-hipoteses
• VOLÓCHINOV, V. A palavra na vida e a palavra na poesia: para uma poética sociológica (1926). In: VOLÓCHINOV, V. A palavra na vida e a palavra na poesia: ensaios, artigos, resenhas e poemas. Tradução de Sheila Grillo e Ekaterina Vólkova Américo. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2019. p.109-146.
• VOLÓCHINOV, V. Marxismo e filosofia da linguagem: problemas fundamentais do método sociológico na ciência da linguagem. Tradução de Sheila Grillo e Ekaterina Vólkova Américo. São Paulo: Ed. 34, 2018.

• 1
  Faoze Chibli is a journalist graduated from Faculdade Cásper Líbero [Casper Libero Faculty], and worked as a freelance contributor to the magazine Filosofia Ciência & Vida in 2006. Information obtained through LinkedIn: https://br.linkedin.com/in/faoze-chibli-5b03b467.
• 2
  Alexandre Lacroix is a writer, essayist and journalist: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Lacroix
• 3
  In the original: “Dans les ouvrages de philosophie qui paraissent aujourd’hui, on est souvent surpris de trouver, aux côtés des références canoniques à Platon, Épicure ou Nietzsche, des analyses d’événements politiques, de blockbusters, de faits divers [...] C’est dans ce contexte particulier qu’intervient le lancement de Philosophie Magazine, dont l’ambition est, précisément, de concilier philosophie et journalisme.” (LACROIX, 2006, p, p. 3).
• 4
  Incidentally, during the years 2013 and 2014, the magazine could be read during the philosophy classes of the Brazilian schools, as it was selected in the edict of “PNBE – periodicals” [PNBE Periódicos]. The PNBE is the “National Programme School Library” [Programa Nacional Biblioteca da Escola] and the “PNBE – periodicals” is aimed at the acquisition and distribution of pedagogical magazines to assist the work of public school teachers and school managers”: https://www.fnde.gov.br/programas/programas-do-livro/legislacao/item/9698-dados-estatisticos. Access on: 07 Apr. 2020.
• 5
  In the original: “La démocratisation de la philosophie est un projet ancient.” (MAUBON, 2010, p, p. 3).
• 6
  In the original: “véritable engouement pour un certain type de philosophie [...] ainsi qu’en témoignent les succès de librairie de certains ouvrages, la forte présence médiatique de la discipline, et l’existence de véritables philosophes-vedettes.” (MAUBON, 2010, p, p. 7).
• 7
  In the original: “compatibilité des contraintes médiatiques avec l’exigence philosophique.” (MAUBON, 2010, p, p. 7).
• 8
  Veganism is defined by The Vegan Society as “a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.” https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/definition-veganism. Access on: 15 Feb. 2020.
• 9
  In the original: “description de la matérialité linguistique des discours – sans description, on ne se situerait pas dans une perspective linguistique – et à une interprétation des données rassemblées – sans interprétation, la démarche ne relèverait pas de l’AD.” (CLAUDEL et al., 2013, p. 22).
• 10
  In the original: “marques linguistiques caractérisant ce type de production.” (REBOUL-TOURÉ, 2004, p, p. 208).
• 11
  We use bold to emphasise the aspects that will be analysed in the exposed examples. The italic emphasis is in the original text. We also number in brackets the passages in direct speech that will be analysed further on.
• 12
  “In general, the animals we eat and the products derived from them come from intensive farming. Although there are institutions that regulate this type of agribusiness, stress, mutilations, in short, sufferings of all kinds are present in the production of products of animal origin. Let us look at some situations that attest to this. Broilers are confined in such a way that the individual space for each bird is so restricted that they are in permanent contact with each other throughout their lives. So that they don’t waste time choosing their food and fatten quickly, maximizing the investments, it is common to cut off their beaks. As overpopulation of chickens generates aggressiveness, an attempt is made to get around it by decreasing the brightness of the environment, for [1] “when there is normal light, the stress caused by overcrowding and the absence of natural leaks to the birds’ energy lead to the outbreak of fights in which the chickens peck at each other’s feathers and sometimes kill and eat each other” (2010, p. 146). However, besides not eliminating aggression, birds [2] “not used to bright light, loud noises or other sources of disturbance may panic because of some sudden change” (2010, p. 152). Much pain is also present in pig and cattle farming. Pigs suffer from obesity and arthritis because their movements are limited, they tend to behave stereotypically, such as gnawing at the cells that hold them and [3] “in the overcrowded environments in which they live, these animals, normally docile, sometimes resort to cannibalism” (Regan, 2005, p. 112). The oxen have their horns removed to take up less space and not to hurt themselves, and are castrated so that the calves fatten faster, denounces Singer (2010, p. 214). In the production of veal the young animal is subjected to a miserable life, since [4] “the essence of this production is the feeding of confined and anaemic calves with a highly proteinic feed” (Singer, 2010, p. 190). Their knees become swollen and painful due to the static position in which the calves are forced to stay. And, as I couldn’t fail to point out, foie gras (goose liver), a delicacy cooked by certain chefs, involves a forced feeding process in which a funnel is introduced into the animal’s throat. In milk and egg production, non-human animals also suffer greatly. In dairy farming cows become milk machines, as [5] “they produce up to 44 litres of milk per day, ten times their normal capacity. This excess weight stresses the udder and aggravates damage to the knees and hips” (Regan, 2005, p. 117). In addition, many cows suffer from mastitis, an inflammation of the mammary glands. And laying hens are preyed in such a way that they can barely spread their wings, making it impossible to build nests and lay eggs in them. This is such a source of suffering that the respected ethologist Konrad Lorenz said it is the worst torture a hen can suffer (cf. Singer, 2010, p. 168). If it were not enough to live in a society in which the majority of the population is not aware of the above, advertising agencies show the opposite. It is common to see commercials of chocolate with smiling cows, happy and bouncy chickens in the commercials of processed industries, smiling animals in the packaging of food of animal origin, finally, there is no lack of advertisements that create a simulacrum of the reality of what happens in poultry houses, corrals, farms, etc. For all that has been said, we cannot refrain from reflecting on the damage and mistreatment caused by humans to other sentient beings in the production of meat, milk and eggs. That is what we are going to do now.” (our translation).
• 13
  The article is divided into three sections: “Harming the animals?” [Nuire aux animaux ?]; “Harming nature?” [Nuire à la nature ?] and “Harming oneself ?” [Se nuire ?].
• 14
  “Consuming meat is tantamount to condoning and even financing the suffering of animals in intensive farming and their killing in slaughterhouses. Recent years have been marked by a cascade of scandals about the conditions of industrial meat production. Battery-farmed chickens undergo a debeaking operation. The device that slices off the beaks of the chicks damages the nasal passages and creates purulent wounds that are often infected. They grow up in violently lit sheds. Pigs have their tails cut off; their teeth are ground to prevent biting; males are castrated. They are removed from their mother after three or four weeks, instead of three or four months naturally. The buildings are overcrowded. 20% of the pigs do not resist these living conditions and die before slaughter, which is only expected one hundred and eighty days after birth. Massive doses of antibiotics are administered to pigs, sheep and cattle during rearing. This presents a double danger: these species develop antibiotic-resistant infections; consumers unknowingly swallow doses of antibiotics, at the risk of making their own treatments less effective. In fish farming, the picture is even less rosy: the fish are raised in crowded tanks, soiled by their droppings. As they hurt each other with their fins, antibiotics are sprinkled on the water so that the wounds do not degenerate. Curiously enough, even before investigative journalists or a militant association, L214, took this type of information out of the meat industry, a philosopher, Peter Singer, professor of applied ethics at Princeton, had widely described these practices in Animal liberation (1975), which launched the concept of speciesism. [1] “Racists”, writes Singer, “violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when these interests conflict with those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by promoting the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists give precedence to the interests of their own species over the greater interests of members of other species”. To put it simply, it is not speciesist to kill a polar bear to save one’s life; but it is speciesist to kill an ox to eat it, because the animal has more interest in staying alive than we have in tasting its rib steak.” (our translation).
• 15
  Since the present article was originally written in Portuguese, we have decided to leave in this same language, in body text, the reference of the works consulted, adding, in footnotes, the reference used for translation. It is worth mentioning that the authorship of Bakhtin Circle’s works is controversial, being sometimes attributed to Bakhtin, sometimes to other authors of the Circle (or even at the same time to Bakthin and another author of the Circle, as it is the case in this first occurrence). [Translator’s note]
• 16
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin; Medvedev (1991 [1928], p. 119).
• 17
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin; Medvedev (1991 [1928], p. 118).
• 18
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin; Medvedev (1991 [1928], p. 119).
• 19
  English version: Bakhtin (1986 [1959-1961], p. 103-131).
• 20
  English version: Bakhtin (1999 [1963]).
• 21
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin; Medvedev (1991 [1928], p. 84).
• 22
  In Vološinov’s vision (2018 [1929], p. 197), “Linguistics has thrown evaluative accent overboard along with the unique utterance (parole) [Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929], p. 81)]. The study of intonation is important because it relates the word to the extraverbal situation (cf. Volóchinov, 2019 [1926], p. 118).
• 23
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin; Medvedev (1991 [1928], p. 121).
• 24
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin; Medvedev (1991 [1928], p. 121).
• 25
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin; Medvedev (1991 [1928], p. 122).
• 26
  The Brazilian translation, produced directly from Russian by Sheila Grillo and Ekaterina Vólkova Américo, includes a glossary of terms used in the work. What has so far been treated as “social evaluation” appears in MPL as “ideological evaluation” (on page 93), “evaluative accent” (on pages 110, 197 and 233), “social value judgment” (on page 111), “ideological accent” (on page 111) and “social accent” (on page 111). See the Glossary entry “evaluative accent” (p. 357). Higashi (2019) also notes that “the term evaluative intonation is presented in a variety of ways in the works of the Bakhtin Circle” (p. 108). According to the author, “we find as correlates the notions emotional and volitional accents, index of social value, expressive intonation, evaluative attitudes, evaluative appreciation, evaluative or appreciative accent and tone” (HIGASHI, 2019, p, p. 108).
• 27
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929], p. 103).
• 28
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929], p. 103).
• 29
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (Bakhtin) (1994 [1926], p. 5).
• 30
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929], p. 105).
• 31
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929], p. 105).
• 32
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (Bakhtin) (1994 [1926], p. 6).
• 33
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (Bakhtin) (1994 [1926], p. 5).
• 34
  In the original: “ll y a donc trois raisons morales sérieuses d’opter pour le végétarisme ou le véganisme. Pourtant, la plupart des lecteurs de cet article, même s’ils approuvent de tout cœur chacun de ces arguments, ne feront pas le saut. Pas plus que l’auteur de ces lignes. Pourquoi ? D’abord, à cause d’un phénomène qu’on appelle, en philosophie éthique, l’acrasie.” (PM, No. 117, Mar. 2018, p. 51).
• 35
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929],, p. 111).
• 36
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929],p. 117).
• 37
  “Broilers are confined in such a way that the individual space for each bird is so restricted that they are in permanent contact with each other throughout their lives. So that they don’t waste time choosing their food and fatten quickly, maximizing the investments, it is common to cut off their beaks. As overpopulation of chickens generates aggressiveness, an attempt is made to get around it by decreasing the brightness of the environment, for [1] “when there is normal light, the stress caused by overcrowding and the absence of natural leaks to the birds’ energy lead to the outbreak of fights in which the chickens peck at each other’s feathers and sometimes kill and eat each other” (2010, p. 146). However, besides not eliminating aggression, birds [2] “not used to bright light, loud noises or other sources of disturbance may panic because of some sudden change.” (our translation).
• 38
  For the lists, see Sardá (2017).
• 39
  Reference used for translation: Vološinov (1973 [1929], p. 111).
• 40
  Curiously enough, even before investigative journalists or a militant association, L214, took this type of information out of the meat industry, a philosopher, Peter Singer, professor of applied ethics at Princeton, had widely described these practices in Animal liberation (1975), which launched the concept of speciesism. [1] “Racists”, writes Singer, “violate the principle of equality by giving greater weight to the interests of members of their own race when these interests conflict with those of another race. Sexists violate the principle of equality by promoting the interests of their own sex. Similarly, speciesists give precedence to the interests of their own species over the greater interests of members of other species.(our translation).
• 41
  Reference used for translation: Bakhtin (1999 [1963], p. 183).

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  30 Mar 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  7 Aug 2020
• Accepted
  19 Sept 2020