A Reflexive Analysis of Writing Practices in Biology: How Scientific Language Erases Farm Animals and Researchers

In this interdisciplinary work bringing together ethologists, physiologists, linguists, and an animal studies scholar, we explored what the linguistic choices of biologists in their scientific writings reveal about their relationship with laboratory animals and their scientific discipline. We engaged in a reflexive conversation on the epistemology and ethics of experimental research conducted on and about animals. The writing style of this article is an experiment in applying the conclusions of our analysis to the way we write, by using the proposed agentive writing style as much as possible. Linguists: through qualitative and quantitative analyses of three peer-reviewed articles on pigs, ducks, and quails, we examined how word choices, nominalisation, gerunds, and passive constructions tend to erase both the agency of animals and the responsibility of experimenters. These linguistic mechanisms contribute to a representation of experimental actions as impersonal events detached from intentional human agency or animal subjectivity. Biologists: in the discussion, we highlight that academic writing norms—standardisation, objectivity, and the dominance of English—reinforce this erasure by discouraging emotional or ethical expression and by encouraging uniform linguistic mimicry. Animal studies scholar: it may also be a psychological strategy to reduce cognitive dissonance arising from your empathy for animals and the harm inherent to experimentation you inflict on them. Collectively: we argue that writing differently, in a way that recognises animals as sentient subjects and researchers as moral agents, could foster methodological and epistemological changes. This reflection echoes the animal turn in the humanities and social sciences.